“Your mother,” Jennifer murmured, adjusting her glasses, “was an absolute apex predator.”
“Yes, she was,” I agreed, running my hand along the cold steel of the safe door. “And she made damn sure I was, too.”
The sun was just beginning to rise over the jagged peaks of the Rockies by the time the police finally cleared the estate. The storm had broken, leaving the morning air crisp, freezing, and smelling sharply of wet pine and ozone.
I stood on the front portico of Redwood Crest, the house that was, and always would be, unequivocally mine. The Vanguard Trust would transfer the deed back to me by Monday afternoon.
Molly walked out the front door, wrapped in a heavy blanket, carrying Ivy. My daughter was awake now, her big, dark eyes taking in the brilliant, blinding light of the morning sun.
I reached out and took my daughter into my arms, holding her tight against my chest. The house behind me was a fortress, built on the unyielding strength of the women who came before her, and protected fiercely by the woman holding her now.
Brent would face decades in a federal penitentiary. His mother, Diane, would likely face conspiracy charges the moment she stepped off her return flight from Miami. The Vance family name would be permanently, irrevocably erased from polite society, just as my mother had intended.
He had tried to lock me out in the cold. Instead, I had buried him.
I kissed the top of Ivy’s head, breathing in the sweet, powdery scent of her skin, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of her tiny heart against mine.
“Welcome home, little one,” I whispered to her, looking out over the sprawling estate, bathed in the golden light of a new dawn. “Welcome to your empire.”
