I married a lonely elderly woman for her money and a roof over my head. But after her funeral, her attorney gave me a box and said, “She told me this is what you truly wanted.”

I sat in the glow of the laptop screen, completely paralyzed.

Forty-five million dollars. Legitimate, washed, and completely untraceable.

Eleanor hadn't just used me as bait. She had forged me in the fire. She knew that if she just handed me the money, the Volkovs would have hunted me down and killed me for it. I had to prove to the syndicate—and to Richard—that the money was destroyed.

She orchestrated the explosion. She orchestrated the vault. She made sure everyone who wanted her dead saw her fortune burn on that pier.

"Julian?" Sarah mumbled sleepily from the other bed. "Are we going to be okay?"

I closed the laptop and looked at my sister. The sister I had pushed away when I was broke and desperate.

"Yeah, Sarah," I whispered, a slow, genuine smile spreading across my bruised face. "We're going to be just fine."

Six months later, Alexander Hayes bought a beautiful estate in the south of France. I paid for my sister’s college tuition in cash. I walked through the vineyards, feeling the warm sun on my face.

I married an old woman for her money, thinking I was outsmarting the world.