Speed was everything, and I understood why in a way Ian never would have.

He thought he had time because he thought I was helpless — a concussed woman in a bed, days from discharge, with no idea what had been done to her.

He did not grasp that his own carelessness had inverted the whole board.

The forty-eight hours he imagined as his window to prepare the pressure and the notary and the paperwork was, in fact, my window, and I meant to use every minute of it.

Because the one thing that could still save Ian and Regan was warning.

If they learned, even a day early, that I knew — that I had an attorney and a forensic accountant and a plan — they would move the money, lawyer up, get ahead of the story, and turn a clean case into a years-long war of attrition that a wealthy family drags out until the wronged party runs out of money and will.