The forged decade of medical logs became, at trial, not evidence against Cosima but evidence against the men who had written them.

And when it was over, Cosima Ravenscroft took the place at the head of the company that had always, by her mother’s true will, been hers — Chairwoman of the Ravenscroft Group, in her own name, answerable to no one who had ever tried to own her.

She did not run it the way it had been run.

The first thing she dissolved was the corrupt management that had been skimming the Thornevale estate; the workers who had been quietly robbed for years were given fair wages and, past that, a share of what they helped the estate earn.

It was a small thing against the size of the empire she now held.

But she had spent ten years being treated as property, and she found she had no appetite for building her freedom on anyone else being treated the same way.