My husband beat me so badly I ended up in the hospital, while my mother-in-law watched without lifting a finger. Before leaving me on the floor, she coldly said, “You deserved it!”

My throat locked up completely. Tears instantly welled in my eyes, spilling over my lashes and burning against my bruised cheekbones.

"Dad?" I choked out, my voice breaking into a thousand pieces. "Dad... is that really you?"

Arthur Vance—my father—had vanished off the face of the earth six years ago, just two months after I closed on the purchase of the penthouse. The police had found his abandoned car near the Hudson River piers, unlocked, with his wallet and phone sitting on the passenger seat. The investigation had gone cold after six months, and the world had assumed he was dead.

"Listen to me carefully, Ara," my father’s voice rasped through the heavy static. "I don't have much time on this satellite link. You need to get out of the city."

"Dad, I already left him!" I sobbed, clutching the phone with both hands. "I served him with a restraining order today! I took back the apartment!"

A long, agonizing pause stretched across the line, filled only with the rhythmic hum of ocean static.

"The apartment was never the real target, Ara," my father whispered, his tone laced with a terrifying, desperate urgency. "Julian didn't marry you because he stumbled into your life at that charity gala. He targeted you. He worked for my engineering firm six months before I disappeared."

My entire body went numb. The room seemed to tilt sideways.

"What... what are you talking about?" I breathed.

"He knows the secret I discovered before I was forced to vanish," my father said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "The house was never the only thing he took from you, Ara. He has the ledger. Look for the second key inside the mahogany desk I left in your storage unit."