Chloe’s POV
The interior of the town car smelled of expensive, treated leather and the faint, lingering scent of my mother’s perfume—a cloying, floral aroma that suddenly made my throat constrict. I stared out the heavily tinted window at the city skyline. The skyscrapers were jagged teeth biting into the dusk, their glass facades reflecting the dying amber light of the sun. Every rhythmic thud-thud of the tires against the asphalt felt like a countdown to my own destruction.
Mia’s voice echoed in my head, cold, precise, and demanding. “You’ll go in, you’ll show them the appropriate amount of grief, and you’ll sign the papers to consolidate the estate. With Ruby dead, those shares revert to you by default. We need those assets liquid, Chloe.”
My hand, resting in my lap, was white-kn
