HE TRADED HIS LOYAL WIFE FOR A GLAMOROUS MISTRESS—UNTIL A DEAD BILLIONAIRE’S HIDDEN WILL STRIPPED HIM OF EVERY PENNY HE EVER STOLE!

“Keep driving!” Adrian roared at the cabbie, his voice wild, his eyes bloodshot. “Take the next exit toward Evanston! Don't you dare stop this car!”

The driver, an elderly immigrant who had seen enough Chicago street drama to know when a passenger was radioactive, immediately flipped on his hazard lights, pulled the taxi onto the shoulder of the Kennedy Expressway, and threw the vehicle into park.

“Get out,” the driver said, his voice flat and unyielding.

“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars!” Adrian yelled, reaching into his suit pocket. He pulled out a sleek platinum money clip, only to find three crumpled twenty-dollar bills. Everything else was credit cards—cards that were now completely worthless pieces of plastic.

The driver turned around, holding a heavy tire iron beside the steering wheel. “I said get out of my cab. Both of you. Now.”

Vanessa didn't wait. Screaming in terror, she threw open the taxi door and scrambled out onto the muddy shoulder of the expressway, her cream trench coat instantly splattered with filthy gray sludge from the passing eighteen-wheelers.

Adrian cursed violently, grabbing his leather briefcase and tumbling out after her into the freezing, relentless Chicago rain. The cab pulled away immediately, spraying a wave of dirty standing water across Adrian’s bespoke charcoal trousers.

“Look at me!” Vanessa shrieked over the roar of the highway traffic, shivering uncontrollably as the rain plastered her blonde hair against her skull. “Look at what you’ve done to me! You’re a monster! You ruined my life!”

“I ruined *your* life?” Adrian screamed back, stepping toward her, his face twisted into a mask of pure madness. “I gave you five-thousand-dollar dresses! I put you in a penthouse! You were a nobody working a reception desk at an art gallery, and I turned you into a queen! And the first time someone flashes a fake badge, you hand over the keys to the entire kingdom?”

“You used me!” she cried out, backing away from him near the guardrail. “You put my name on those dirty offshore companies so that if you got caught, I would take the fall! That lawyer, Mr. Sterling—he called me this morning! He showed me the signatures! You set me up to be your patsy!”

Adrian stopped. A cold, horrific realization dawned on him.

*Sterling had called her.*

Catherine’s legal team hadn't just audited the company; they had flipped Vanessa before Adrian had even woken up that morning. The visit from the “auditor” at the Drake hadn't been a coincidence—it had been Catherine’s investigators offering Vanessa an immunity agreement in exchange for the physical execution of the corporate records.

Vanessa reached into her soaked Hermès bag, pulled out her phone, and tapped the screen. “I’m calling the police,” she sobbed. “I’m telling them where you are. Mr. Sterling said if I cooperated, the Whitmore Trust wouldn't pursue civil recovery against my mother’s house!”

“Give me that damn phone!” Adrian lunged forward.

Vanessa shrieked, dropping the phone onto the asphalt. Adrian dove for it, but before his fingers could close around the glass, the heavy blare of an emergency siren sliced through the rain.

Two dark blue Illinois State Police cruisers pulled onto the shoulder forty yards ahead, their red and blue strobe lights flashing violently against the gray mist. Behind them sat an unmarked black suburban—the unmistakable transport of federal investigators.

Adrian froze on his hands and knees in the gravel.

Vanessa sprinted toward the police cars, waving her arms frantically. “Here! He’s over here! He tried to attack me!”

Adrian scrambled to his feet. He looked across the eight lanes of rushing, high-speed traffic on the Kennedy Expressway. To run was suicide. To stay was a federal penitentiary.

He turned toward the grassy embankment that sloped down toward a maze of industrial rail yards and service roads. Clutching his briefcase against his chest like a drowning man holding a piece of driftwood, Adrian scrambled down the muddy slope, slipping, sliding, his expensive shoes tearing open against the rocks and broken glass.

“Adrian Blake! Stop where you are!” a voice boomed over a cruiser’s megaphone.

Adrian didn't look back. He crashed through a line of overgrown wet brush, sliding into the shadow of an abandoned freight depot. His breath tore from his lungs in ragged, burning gasps. Rain soaked through his wool coat, chilling him to the bone.

He was the titan of Chicago. The man who had looked at Catherine Whitmore twenty-four hours ago and told her she was nothing.