I stared at those two texts for a long time.

The sender quickly added one more line.

“Want to know the truth? Three days from now, the old fish market on the south side of Baltimore.”

Three days from now.

The exact day they were coming to take me in.

I called the number back.

Not in service.

The door swung open, and my mother-in-law walked in with her handbag.

Behind her came the Gilbert family driver and two bodyguards.

“Evelyn, aren't you something now.”

She tossed her bag onto the couch. “Keeping Laurence up all night over you.”

I almost laughed.

Laurence had stayed up all night pulling strings for Madge.

What did that have to do with me?

“Mother.”

“Don't call me that.”

She sat down, her well-preserved face full of distaste. “You've been married into this family all these years and your belly's still empty, and your own people can't prop themselves up either. Now we ask you to take a little heat for the Gilberts, and you're putting on airs?”

I set the phone face-down on the blanket.

“Are you finished?”

She snorted. “I read the divorce agreement. You walk away with nothing. At least you know your place.”

“Mm.”

“But this can't happen now.”

I looked at her.

She lifted the water cup and blew across steam that wasn't there.

“Right now you're Mrs. Gilbert. Your confession carries weight that way. Once the sentence comes down and it all blows over, the family will give you some money.”

Watching her, I suddenly understood where Laurence's cold blood came from.

It ran in the family.

“How much?”

She blinked, as if she hadn't expected me to ask.

“Two million.”

I smiled.

My mother's old house had sold for eight million back then, and every cent of it had gone into the Gilbert accounts.

Now my freedom, my name, my whole life.

Worth two million.

“Too little.”

Her face changed. “Evelyn, don't be greedy.”

“Then find someone else.”

She shot to her feet. “You wouldn't dare!”

I pressed the call button for the nurse.

Her chest heaved with anger. “You think Laurence really can't bear to let you go? Let me tell you, if you hadn't put up money for this family back then, someone with your background wouldn't have made it past our front door.”

I raised my eyes. “So that money was my admission ticket?”

She had no answer for that.

Footsteps came from the doorway.

Laurence appeared, looking worse than he had the night before.

“Mother, go on home first.”

She jabbed a finger at me. “Look at the attitude on her now!”

Laurence rubbed the space between his brows. “I'll talk to her.”

Then it was just the two of us in the room.

He set a new agreement in front of me.

“Sign it.”

I glanced over it.

Two million had become five million.

Plus an apartment in the suburbs.

“Your mother just said two million.”

“Evelyn.”

There was fire held down under his voice. “Don't push your luck.”

I looked up. “Laurence, I want a hundred million.”

He looked like he hadn't heard right.

“What did you say?”

“A hundred million.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Madge's freedom isn't worth that much?”

His face darkened. “Evelyn, when did you turn so money-grubbing?”

That one nearly made me laugh.

The Gilberts hadn't minded when they took my money.

They hadn't minded when they made me take the fall.

Now I ask for money, and I'm money-grubbing.

“Then forget it.”

I pushed the agreement back at him.

Laurence leaned over and seized my wrist. “You really think I've got no way to deal with you?”

His grip crushed down until my wrist ached.

I looked at him. “You're welcome to try.”

A cough came from the hall.

Owen was standing there, a document folder in his hand.

“Mr. Gilbert, let go, please.”

Laurence turned his head, his eyes chilling.

“And who are you?”

Owen pushed his glasses up. “Miss Fox's attorney.”

Laurence sneered. “You?”

Owen didn't rise to it. He just handed me the file.

“Miss Fox, that matter you asked me to look into. I have the results.”

I hadn't asked him to look into anything.

But he pressed a slip of paper into my palm.

There was only one line on it.

“Fish market meeting moved up. Ten o'clock tonight.”

I closed my hand around the note.

Laurence stared at me. “What results?”

Owen's expression didn't shift. “An accounting of the marital assets.”

“She's walking away with nothing. What is there to account for?”

I looked up all at once. “Who said I'm walking away with nothing?”

Laurence's pupils shrank.

I took the divorce agreement back and tore it in two right in front of him.

Scraps of paper drifted onto the blanket.

“Laurence, I've changed my mind.”

His jaw clenched. “Evelyn.”

I looked at him.

“I want ten percent of the Gilbert company.”

Laurence had left in a rage.

On his way out he slammed the door of the hospital room.

When the nurse came in to change my dressing, she asked under her breath, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

She looked at the shredded paper on the floor and sighed. "So rich people are like this too."

I didn't answer.

At half past nine that night I changed back into my own clothes and slipped out the back door of the hospital.

Owen's car was waiting at the mouth of the alley.

He handed me a hat.

"Someone's following you."

I slid into the back seat. "Laurence's people?"

"Not only them."

My heart jumped.

"Who else?"

Owen glanced at the rearview mirror. "The lady's people."

I gripped the seatbelt.

"You know my mother?"

He was quiet for a few seconds.

"I owe her a debt."

The car turned into the old downtown district.

Half of the old fish market on the south side of Baltimore had already been torn down, and the sheet-metal barriers were plastered with For Lease ads.

The rain was coming down hard.

When I pushed the door open, my shoe sank into a puddle.

The familiar fishy smell had faded to almost nothing.

Even so, it dragged me straight back to that night when I was fifteen.

My mother had pressed a silver fish-scale clasp into my palm.

She said, "Evie, if I don't come back, go find the person who wears a black pearl earring stud."

Over the years I'd seen plenty of people with earring studs.

Not one of them had ever matched.

Owen led me around to the back door of the warehouse.

A single lamp was burning inside.

A middle-aged man sat on a battered wooden crate, a black pearl on his left earlobe.

I stood in the doorway, my legs unsteady.

The man looked up at me.

"Miss."

The single word landed hard, and my throat closed up.

"Where's my mother?"

He stood. "The lady can't show herself yet."

"Why not?"

"There was infighting in the Henson family back then, and the lady was being hunted. She hid you to keep you alive."

I let out a short laugh.

"Twenty years of staying alive?"

The man lowered his head. "The lady lost her memory for a while. It only came back last year. She's been looking for you ever since."

I stared at him.

True or false, it all sounded like a joke.

"Where's your proof?"

He handed me a document envelope.

Inside were a paternity test, old photographs, and a share-holding proxy agreement.

In the photo, my mother, young, in a black suit, held a swaddled infant in her arms.

She was not a woman who sold fish at a market.

On the back of the photo was a single line.

Monica Henson and her daughter, Evelyn Henson. Taken at the one-month celebration.

Evelyn Henson.

So my surname had been Henson all along.

I held the photo, my fingers going cold.

"Do the Gilberts know?"

The man said nothing.

A cramp twisted through my stomach.

"Tell me."

"The Gilbert matriarch may know."

My head snapped up.

"What do you mean?"

"The last person the lady saw before she disappeared was the old Mrs. Gilbert."

Headlights swept across the wall outside the warehouse.

Owen said in a low voice, "Someone's here."

The man pushed a flash drive into my hand.

"Inside is the evidence of how the Gilberts swallowed the Henson assets back then. Miss, you have to get out of here alive first."

Before I could say a word, the door was kicked open.

Laurence stood in the rain, several bodyguards behind him.

His gaze dropped to the document envelope in my hand.

"Evelyn."

He walked in, step by step. "So you really are digging into the Gilberts."

I slid the photo into my bag.

"You followed me?"

"If I hadn't followed you, I never would've known you were sneaking around, conspiring with outsiders behind my back."

He looked at Owen and the man, his eyes like knives.

"Hand it over."

I took half a step back.

Laurence's voice went cold. "Evelyn, don't push me."

"Laurence, what are you afraid of?"

His face stiffened.

I gripped the flash drive. "Afraid I'll find out my mother's disappearance had something to do with the Gilberts?"

The rain hammered down inside the warehouse, grating on the nerves.

Something blank flickered in Laurence's eyes.

He didn't know.

At least in that moment, he didn't look like he knew.

But he recovered his cold detachment fast.

"What you should be worried about right now is tomorrow's statement."

"And if I don't go?"

Laurence stepped closer, his voice dropping low enough that only I could hear.

"Then I'll dig up that fish-selling mother of yours and let the whole city know Evelyn Fox is an orphan nobody ever wanted."

I raised my hand and slapped him.

A crisp crack.

Even the rain seemed to stop.

Laurence turned his face aside, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

He smiled.

"Good."

The next second, a bodyguard rushed forward and pinned my shoulder.

The flash drive was torn from my hand.

As I struggled, the small of my back struck the corner of the crate, and the pain blacked out my vision.

Laurence held the flash drive, his eyes ice-cold.

"Nine o'clock tomorrow morning. You go to the police station."

I glared at him through gritted teeth.

He leaned down and tucked my loose hair behind my ear.

The gesture was so intimate it made me sick.

"Otherwise, Evelyn, I'll make sure you don't even get the chance to regret it."