“Mom, don’t stop me.” Those five words turned my blood to ice.

My fingers trembled as I read my father’s tight, stressed handwriting.

“Eleanor thinks she hid her affair with Richard Vance during the summer of 1992. She thinks I never knew why she suddenly insisted on spending three months in Geneva. But I ran the DNA test the week Vanessa was born. Vanessa is not my biological daughter.”

I gasped, dropping the diary onto the mahogany desk.

Richard Vance.

Arthur Ellison’s former law partner—the co-founder of Ellison, Vance & Reed who had mysteriously disappeared from Newport high society twelve years ago after a massive financial scandal.

I picked the diary back up, my eyes devouring the remaining lines of the entry.

“I raised Vanessa as my own because I loved Eleanor, but over the years, I watched Vanessa inherit her biological father’s insatiable greed and ruthlessness. I created the Zurich vault to protect Claire. Inside Vault 408 is the original ledger Richard Vance used to hide his offshore accounts before he fled the country. If Eleanor or Vanessa ever try to destroy Claire, this ledger will tear down everything Richard built...”

My head spun.

The two point four million dollars Vanessa had embezzled from Graham’s firm... she hadn't just picked a random shell company. She had used an account linked to Richard Vance.

Vanessa hadn't just been stealing money. She had been working with her biological father all along.

My phone on the desk suddenly began to vibrate.

It was an international call. The caller ID displayed a country code from Switzerland.

My heart plummeted into my stomach.