Then Lily added something Marcus had not expected at all.

“She talks to Julian, too.”

The name meant nothing to him.

“Who’s Julian?”

“A man who comes over sometimes,” Lily whispered, “when you’re away.

They talk about Mommy’s beach house.”

For a second, Marcus stopped breathing.

With that sentence, the shape of the situation changed.

This was no longer simply a cruel stepmother mistreating a child she resented.

A man Marcus had never heard of was coming into his home while he was traveling, and he and Sarah were talking about Hannah’s beach house.

And the beach house was not a minor asset.

It was the center of everything.

Chapter 6 — The Beach House

The estate was on Martha’s Vineyard.

It had belonged to Hannah’s grandmother, and after a complicated family trust arrangement, it was connected to a holding company whose majority shares belonged outright to Lily.