On Monday morning, I entered Margaret Reed’s office with my hair pulled back tightly, flawless lipstick, and a stomach heavy with poison.

Not actual poison.

Not yet.

That would happen later.

Margaret was in her late sixties, refined, piercing-eyed, and utterly impossible to scare. She had managed my father’s business matters for twenty-five years and had been there when he transferred majority control of Hartwell Designs to me.