On my honeymoon cruise, i got seasick and returned to my room for medicine. I accidentally overheard my husband plotting: “tonight, just push her into the sea. We’ll return home, inherit her $300m & live forever with my mistress!”

Forty-eight hours later, the private executive conference suite of Vance & Associates on the 40th floor of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper was bathed in the morning sun.

Flynn Vance sat at the head of the sixty-foot mahogany conference table, dressed in a bespoke black mourning suit, dabbing his eyes with a silk handkerchief.

Beside him sat Aidan and Fiona, looking appropriately somber, and standing near the door was Vanessa Cole—Flynn’s secret lover and accomplice, posing as his corporate financial advisor.

Twelve senior estate lawyers and insurance adjusters sat around the table with thick, gold-embossed testamentary folios.

"Mr. Vance," Attorney Bradley Sterling (no relation) announced solemnly. "We have convened to execute the expedited transfer of the $300 million Sterling Family Living Trust, pursuant to the Power of Attorney executed prior to Mrs. Elena Sterling-Vance’s tragic maritime disappearance."

Flynn bowed his head with theatrical sorrow.

"Elena was the love of my life," Flynn choked out into the silence. "Her memory will live on through the charitable foundations my family intends to establish."

Vanessa slid an electronic signature pad across the table, her eyes glittering with greedy anticipation. "Sign line forty-four, Flynn, and the funds will be wired to the Swiss fiduciary escrow within ten minutes."

Flynn grabbed the gold Montblanc pen, smiling inwardly as he pressed the tip to the glass.