CHAPTER 2: TWENTY YEARS LATER

**PRESENT DAY**

Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty.

I shut off the shower at exactly fifty seconds, hand moving with the same robotic precision I’d perfected over two decades. Water droplets clung to my skin like accusations—each one a tiny echo of that black river.

Fifty seconds. My absolute limit. Long enough to feel clean. Not long enough for the old panic to claw its way up my throat.

I wrapped myself in thick Egyptian cotton and moved through the rest of the ritual without thought. Moistizer—twelve even strokes. Serum—precise taps under each eye. Eye cream for shadows that no concealer could fully erase anymore.

Control was everything. Control was survival.

The woman staring back from the mirror bore almost no resemblance to the terrified child dragged from that river. That girl had been helpless. Small. A victim.

This woman was none of those things.

Sophia Ashford. Twenty-eight. CEO of Phias Empire—a name stitched together from my parents’ initials, James and Claire. Self-made billionaire, they called me in the headlines, though I’d started with fifty million in trust.

Turning fifty million into eight-point-two billion?

That I had done alone.

I pulled my hair into a severe ponytail—twenty-seven brush strokes, always twenty-seven—and applied minimal makeup. Foundation to mask exhaustion. Mascara to look alert instead of haunted. A single swipe of red lipstick, sharp as a blade.

Charcoal Armani suit. Louboutin heels. My mother’s diamond necklace—the only piece of her jewelry the divers had recovered. It rested against my collarbone like cool armor.

My phone buzzed at 6:47 a.m. Right on schedule.

**Mr. Thomas: Car ready. Coffee hot. Detective Chen called—wants to meet today. Important.**

Some things never changed. Mr. Thomas—my father’s former driver, now my driver, assistant, occasional bodyguard, and the only human being I trusted without reservation.

**Me: Down in five. Tell Chen 3 p.m. usual place.**

The penthouse was pristine. All glass and steel and white marble. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed Manhattan like a kingdom I’d conquered. Minimalist to the point of sterility. My old therapist once called it “a beautiful prison reflecting your emotional state.”

I’d fired her the following week.

Mr. Thomas waited beside the black Mercedes, tall coffee already in hand—black, no sugar, exactly how I liked it.

“Morning, Miss Sophia.” He opened the rear door with the same quiet courtesy he’d shown me at eight years old. “Board meeting at nine, Tokyo call at eleven, Singapore lunch at twelve-thirty, Chen at three.”

“Cancel lunch. Reschedule next week.” I slid into the back seat, already opening my tablet. “Brooklyn manufacturing branch—three weeks of delayed reports. I’m visiting today.”

A flicker crossed his face in the rearview mirror. “The one with the delays?”

“Mrs. Kane has a spotless five-year record. Suddenly can’t send reports?” I sipped coffee, letting the bitter heat ground me. “Something’s wrong. I’m handling it personally.”

He eased into traffic with practiced smoothness. Classical music filled the quiet car—my fingers tapping the tablet screen in rhythm.

“Detective Chen sounded urgent,” he said after a few blocks.

My pulse kicked up a notch. Twenty years of quiet investigation. Twenty years of circumstantial threads, suspicious financial trails, coincidences that weren’t coincidences—but never anything solid enough to take to court.

“Hints?”

“The mechanic who serviced your father’s car the week before the crash. The one who vanished afterward.” Mr. Thomas’s eyes met mine in the mirror. “Chen thinks he might have located him.”

The coffee turned to acid in my stomach. Fifteen years searching for that man. He was the missing piece—the one person who could confirm whether the brakes had been tampered with.

I forced my attention back to emails, but my mind kept circling back to three o’clock.

Phias Empire headquarters rose fifty stories into the morning sky, all gleaming glass and sharp angles. My building. My monument to survival.

Every time I looked at it, savage satisfaction curled in my chest. They’d wanted me broken. Instead, I’d built something untouchable.

Fifty million into eight billion.

And I was nowhere near finished.

“I’ll text when I’m ready for Brooklyn,” I told Mr. Thomas as we pulled up.

“Be careful. The family’s been asking questions about your investigation again.”

Ice slid down my spine. “What kind of questions?”

“The kind that suggest they know you’re getting close. Your uncle especially.”

“Let them ask.” I stepped out, heels clicking on marble. “I’m not stopping.”

The board meeting dragged—two hours of older men mansplaining my own strategy to me. By 11:45 I’d forced through the Asian expansion they’d stalled for months.

Back in my office, my phone rang.

Grandma.

I almost let it go to voicemail. But she was one of only three people who had ever truly loved me.

“Hi, Grandma.”

“Sophia, darling.” Her voice carried the gentle weariness of age. “Your grandfather turns eighty next month.”

My chest tightened. “I know.”

“He wants a celebration. At the estate. Just family and a few close friends.” She paused. “He wants you there. We both do. It might be his last big birthday.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. We’re not getting any younger.” Her tone softened. “Please, Sophia. For us.”

I wanted to refuse. The thought of facing Uncle Richard’s bitterness, Aunt Melissa’s calculated warmth, Sophie’s existence—it felt like walking into a room full of venomous snakes.

But this was Grandpa.

“I’ll be there. When?”

“Saturday the twenty-third. Six o’clock.” Relief flooded her voice. “Thank you. And Sophia? Your aunt mentioned introducing you to someone—”

“No.” Flat. Final. “No setups. I’ll come for Grandpa’s birthday. That’s it.”

“She’s just worried. You’re twenty-eight and you’ve never—”

“Never married? Never had a relationship?” I stood and walked to the windows, city sprawling below like a glittering map of conquests. “I’ve built an eight-billion-dollar empire, Grandma. I’m doing fine.”

“Money isn’t everything.”

“Says someone who’s never had to fight for it.” The words came out sharper than intended. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s alright.” She sighed. “Just promise you’ll think about letting someone into your life? You can’t live behind walls forever.”

*Can’t I? I’ve been doing it successfully for twenty years.*

“I’ll think about it. Promise.”

After we hung up, I stood at the glass, watching the tiny figures far below forming connections, taking risks I’d trained myself never to take.

Maybe they were fools.

Or maybe I was the fool.

My phone buzzed again.

**Mr. Thomas: Ready for Brooklyn. Also—Mrs. Kane’s son is at the facility now, handling reports. She’s been too ill to come in for three weeks.**

Three weeks. The exact window of the delays.

Not negligence. Crisis management born of fear.

**Me: Coming down now. Make sure HR has medical leave policies ready. If Mrs. Kane’s been working through illness because she’s afraid to take time off, that’s our failure, not hers.**

**Mr. Thomas: Already done. You’re a good person, Miss Sophia. Even if you work very hard to hide it.**

I allowed myself a small, private smile.

Time to fix this mess.

And perhaps—though I wouldn’t admit it aloud—time to discover why my instincts whispered that this seemingly small situation mattered far more than it should.