For the first time in years, I almost believed someone.

His house in the hills outside Greenwich was impossibly quiet. The girls stared at beds that actually belonged to them. Lily wouldn’t give up Richard’s jacket; she wrapped herself inside it and whispered, “It smells safe.”

I cried once they were asleep. I thought the nightmare was over.

That same night, Margaret Whitmore called the police and accused me of stealing three million dollars from the Whitmore Foundation. Then she petitioned the court for immediate custody of my daughters, on the grounds that I was homeless, unstable, and using my children to seduce one of Connecticut’s richest men.

The real fight hadn’t even started.

Part 2

At seven the next morning, two police cruisers and a news van were parked outside Richard Bennett’s estate.