Five minutes after my divorce was final, my father gripped my arm outside the courthouse and said, “Block every card, right now.” That night my ex tried to spend $300,000 on his mistress’s sapphire necklace with my company’s black card — in a club my firm owned.

It was declined.

So was the backup.

None of them knew my father had been a federal fraud investigator for thirty years, or what else he’d found that afternoon.

PART 1

Only five minutes had passed since the judge finalized my divorce when my father, Rafael Marchetti, took my arm outside the family courthouse in downtown Chicago.

My heart was still in pieces.

My ex-husband, Trevor Shaw, had just walked out of the building with Vanessa Cole on his arm as if he hadn’t ended nine years of marriage but had won a prize at a fair.

Vanessa wore oversized sunglasses, an ivory silk blouse, and a smile that wasn’t about happiness.

It was about me.

Trevor glanced back.

“Don’t cry too hard, Mari,” he said. “Some women just don’t know how to keep a man.”

Vanessa laughed.

My face burned.

I didn’t answer.

My father did.

My father is not a dramatic man.