Within ninety days the bank had taken their ten-bedroom house in Palm Beach. I read the asset filings without a flicker of sadness. Stripped of the clothes and the cars and the clubs, my parents simply dropped out of the world they’d worshiped.

They moved into a small two-bedroom apartment at the edge of the city. The wealthy friends who’d once flattered them treated the Pembroke name like something contagious, and stopped answering their calls.

They had no money, and no status left at all.

My own life opened up into something I’d never let myself imagine. Two months after Kirk was born, Alistair and I married in a quiet ceremony at our house by the sea.

I wore a simple white dress, and I had never seen him smile the way he did that day. We spoke our vows under the old oaks, and the last of my childhood loosened its grip.

I had no intention of settling into life as a rich man’s wife. I took a role at Sanders Holdings and ran an entire division. When the court broke up and sold off my parents’ company, I was the one who bought their best properties and folded them into ours.