Rupert had made that hope impossible the moment his hands were on me.

So I sent the three words, and then I looked up toward the shadowed balcony above the ballroom, where a figure had been standing in the dark for the better part of an hour, watching everything.

“Dad,” I whispered.

“It’s time.”

The side doors opened.

Cornelius Ellsworth walked in, flanked by the company’s general counsel and two members of the board.

He was seventy-one, silver-haired, and feared across three continents by people far more powerful than my husband.

He walked without hurry, the way a man walks when the room is already his and always has been.

Rupert’s smile disappeared.

Chapter 6 — The Controlling Beneficiary