Isadora pressed her thumb to a sensor hidden in the grain, and the panel slid open onto a private elevator.

She stepped inside and descended one level beneath the house.

When the doors opened, the woman her husband believed he had married was gone.

What stood in her place, stepping out into the cool light of the room below, was someone the Beckworth family had lived beside for eight years and never once met.

The office beneath the mansion held secure terminals, walls of financial records, satellite conference screens, and direct lines to Danforth Capital’s offices in New York, Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco.

It was quiet down here, and orderly, and entirely hers — the one room in that enormous house where she did not have to be small.