The trust holds thirty percent of the non-voting shares of Hale Enterprises, and a liquid cash reserve of forty million dollars.

Your father named Juliet as the sole beneficiary of that trust, to take effect upon your mother’s passing.”

I kept my face still.

It was a skill I had spent a lifetime perfecting, and I needed all of it now, because the number Hollis had just said was not merely a large sum of money.

Thirty percent of the shares and forty million in cash, placed in the hands of a woman almost no one knew existed, was the kind of leverage that could tip the balance of power in my entire organization.

If my lieutenants learned of it, if the rival families in the city caught the scent of a hidden Hale with that kind of stake, I knew exactly what would follow, and none of it was peaceful.