Chapter 13 — Eight A.M.

At precisely eight the next morning, two black SUVs pulled up to the security gates of my estate.

I rode in the lead vehicle with Camille and six uniformed private-enforcement officers, and when we stepped onto the front driveway, the tableau waiting for us told the whole story without a word.

Trevor stood on the porch in his bathrobe, pale and disheveled and exhausted, a man who had spent the night calling a phone that was turned off.

Marguerite sat on the steps with an ice pack pressed to her cheek — a cheek that no one had touched but her own hand, red only where her own slap had rebounded, though I had no doubt she would tell everyone I had put the mark there.

And Bristol sat on a heap of designer luggage, sobbing into her hands, surrounded by the counterfeit trappings of the billionaire life she had demanded thirty thousand dollars to pretend to live.