Chapter 1

Three years into our marriage, my husband, Baron, still thought I was a gold digger.

Because I kept asking him for money.

At first, it was ten thousand dollars.

Later, when our daughter Alva was hospitalized, it became two hundred thousand.

He threw a stack of transfer records in my face.

“Nora, thirty-six million dollars in three years. How much more do you need before you’re finally satisfied?”

But his best friend and CFO, Cheryl, had only been sending me five hundred dollars a month.

I showed him my bank statements.

Cheryl’s eyes turned red. She said there had to be a system error.

So Baron called me greedy in front of everyone.

That night, Alva lay in a hospital bed, burning up with a fever that wouldn’t break.

I had no choice but to call Baron again, begging him to pay the hospital bill.

“A million dollars just hit your account. What are you acting out now?”

Then he hung up.

But my balance was only two hundred thirty-seven dollars.

The next second, Cheryl’s Instagram story popped up.

In the photo, she wore a ten-carat diamond ring. A brand-new sports car sat behind her.

The caption read:

“Year three of being chosen, firmly and without hesitation. Thank you, my good friend Baron, for spoiling me every month.”

Baron had commented underneath:

“You’re more reasonable than Nora.”

I stared at those words and sent three years of bank statements to my lawyer.

“File for divorce.”

“And find out whose account that thirty-six million really went into.”

…

The doors to the emergency room opened.

The doctor pulled off his mask and asked, “The child’s father still isn’t here?”

I braced myself against the wall and stood.

My legs were so numb I could barely feel them.

“He’s out of town.”

The doctor glanced at the payment record, then shook his head with regret.

“We used the specialty medication, but the infection was too severe. She missed the best window for surgery. Go in and see her.”

Alva lay very still on the hospital bed.

She wasn’t even three.

The back of her little hand was covered in needle marks.

The nurse removed the monitor leads from her body and whispered, “At the end, she kept calling for Mommy.”

I bent down and pressed my face against her cold little hand.

My phone vibrated.

Baron had sent a voice message.

“Don’t use the kid to test my limits again.”

“A million dollars was just transferred. That’s enough for ten hospital stays. Be home before tomorrow morning, or deal with the consequences.”

The nurse heard it and couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Your husband doesn’t know how serious Alva’s condition is?”

“I called him seventeen times.”

The nurse looked at the two hundred thirty-seven dollars left in my account and fell silent.

The specialty medication had slowed Alva’s decline.

But I couldn’t scrape together the two hundred thousand dollars for surgery.

The million Baron talked about had never reached my account.

At dawn, the nurse handed me the death certificate.

I held the pen and stopped for a long time at the line for father’s name.

In the end, I still wrote Baron Hale.

By the time my lawyer, Rex, arrived, I had already changed Alva into the new dress she never got to wear.

He draped his coat over my shoulders.

“I found it. For the past three years, the fixed transfers you received were five hundred dollars a month. The sender was Hale Group’s finance department.”

I tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“Eighteen thousand total in three years. If I hadn’t worked several side jobs, Alva and I wouldn’t have made it this long.”

“And the thirty-six million?”

Rex lowered his voice. “What Baron showed you weren’t bank statements. They were internal payment records. The money went into a shell company called RHL. The funds were split into dozens of transfers. The trail is complicated.”

I cut the hospital bracelet from Alva’s wrist and placed it in a clear bag.

“Trace every single dollar.”

My phone rang again.

It was Cheryl.

“Nora, Baron asked me to remind you that the money has arrived. You and Alva have caused enough trouble. It’s time to come home.”