My stepmom snatched the family drawing I’d spent a week making and threw it in the trash — she had no idea what my dad would do next.

I sat in the car in the dark driveway, my hands on the steering wheel, my mind racing.

The Halewood CEO.

His name was David Kren.

I’d looked into him during the merger investigation.

Three previous wives, all older rich women who’d died “naturally” within two years of the wedding.

A criminal record for fraud in three different countries.

And now he was holding my firm hostage.

I had nine hours.

Nine hours to save Langford.

Nine hours to save Voss Capital.

Nine hours to save everything Daddy and I had built.

I went inside, kissed Mia’s sleeping forehead, then went to the kitchen and called Marcus, Arthur, Sarah, and Mark.

They were all at the house within an hour.

We worked through the night, going through every file we had on Kren, looking for anything we could use against him.

We found it at five in the morning.

A marriage license from four years prior, filed in a small town in Nevada.

David Kren and Elena Hale.

They’d been married in secret, the week after Daddy died.

That’s why she’d picked him for the merger.

That’s why she’d given him the client data.

They’d been working together the whole time.

If the merger went through, they’d split the proceeds, and Elena would get out of jail a rich woman, free to start over somewhere else.

And we found something else.

Proof Kren had been running a sweatshop in Bangladesh, paying children five cents an hour to make clothes, falsifying safety reports, covering up a factory fire that had killed twenty-three women two years prior.

He’d been using Langford’s name to get contracts for the clothes, knowing no one would suspect a reputable American brand.

I smiled, cold and sharp.

I had exactly what I needed.

I called an emergency press conference for eight AM, an hour before the board was set to vote on the takeover.

Every major news outlet in the country showed up.

I stood at the podium, the framed drawing of our family sitting on the table next to me, and told them everything.

I showed them the marriage license between Kren and Elena.

I showed them the proof of the sweatshop, the factory fire, the child labor.

I showed them the text messages between Kren and Elena, plotting the merger, plotting to destroy Langford, plotting to kill Daddy.

I played the recording of Kren’s blackmail threat from the night before.

By the time I finished speaking, the news was already everywhere.

HALEWOOD CEO SECRETLY MARRIED TO MURDERER ELENA HALE, RUNS CHILD LABOR SWEATSHOPS.

Kren’s board fired him within ten minutes.

The hostile takeover bid was withdrawn.

The Langford board voted unanimously to reject the offer, and to make me the permanent CEO of Langford Group, effective immediately.

The stock price jumped 30% in an hour.

It was over.

Finally.

Elena’s trial started three months later.

It was the trial of the century, covered by every news outlet in the world.

Mark testified.

Leo testified.

Jenna testified, apologizing, saying Elena had threatened to kill her family if she didn’t lie.

The hitman testified, saying Elena had paid him fifty thousand dollars to tamper with Daddy’s brakes.

I testified, telling the court about the drawing, about the threats to Mia, about the fake audio, about the planted drugs, about every cruel thing she’d done in the two years she’d been in our lives.

The jury deliberated for four days.

They found her guilty on all counts: first-degree murder, fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, attempted murder of Mia and me, child endangerment, perjury, bribery.

The judge sentenced her to forty-five years in federal prison, no chance of parole.

She’d be eighty-seven before she got out.

If she ever got out.

As the officers led her out of the courtroom in cuffs, she turned and looked at me, her eyes burning with hate.

“This isn’t over,” she mouthed.

I just smiled.

It was over.

We walked out of the courthouse into the bright sunshine.

Mia ran to me, holding a drawing she’d made, of me and her and Daddy, all under a rainbow, with Elena behind bars in the corner.

“Did we win, Mommy?” she said, grinning, her two front teeth still missing.

I picked her up, spinning her around, laughing as she squealed.

“Yes, baby,” I said. “We won.”

The next year was the happiest of our lives.

I settled into my role as CEO of Langford Group, renaming it Langford-Voss to honor both Daddy’s legacy and the firm I’d built.

I implemented free childcare for every employee, raised the minimum wage to twenty-five dollars an hour, gave everyone six weeks of paid parental leave, and started the Richard Langford Foundation, a nonprofit that helped single parents get housing, childcare, and education to build better lives for their kids.

Mark stayed on as COO, working harder than ever to make up for the years he’d spent helping Elena.

Arthur stayed on as general counsel.

Leo ran the IT department.

Rosa moved into the guest house of the family home, which we’d renovated top to bottom, getting rid of every trace of Elena, filling it with color, with Mia’s drawings, with laughter.

Mia turned seven that spring.

She was happy, confident, no longer flinching when someone raised their voice, no longer having nightmares.

She ran for class representative and won, giving a speech about kindness and standing up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves that made the whole school cry.

She still wore her pink ribbons every day.

She still slept with her stuffed rabbit every night.

And she still drew rainbows on every piece of paper she could find.

I thought the worst was behind us.

I was wrong.

One Tuesday, a month after Mia’s birthday, I got a letter in the mail, postmarked from the maximum-security prison where Elena was being held.

I opened it, curious.

It was one line, scrawled in her messy, slanted handwriting, in that same deep red nail polish she’d always worn.

I have one last secret.