Elara's POV
The sound of splintering wood tears me from sleep.
I jolt upright in bed, heart hammering against my ribs. It's barely light outside—the sky that pale gray that comes just before sunrise. For one confused second, I think I'm dreaming. Then I hear my mother screaming.
"FBI! Search warrant! Open the door!"
More crashes. Heavy boots thundering through our penthouse. Men's voices shouting commands that blend together into noise that doesn't make sense.
I stumble out of bed, still in my pajamas—soft pink cotton that suddenly feels too thin, too childish. My hands shake as I reach for the bedroom door. Before I can open it, it flies inward.
Three men in dark jackets fill my doorway. The letters FBI glow yellow on their chests.
"Elara Sinclair?" one asks.
I can only nod.
"Stay in your room, please."
They leave two agents outside my door like guards. Like I'm a prisoner in my own home.
Through the crack in the doorway, I see chaos. More agents swarm through the penthouse, pulling open drawers, dumping papers from my father's study onto the floor. Someone's taking pictures. Someone else is talking into a radio.
"Dad?" My voice comes out small and scared. "What's happening?"
Nobody answers me.
I hear my mother crying somewhere—these horrible, gasping sobs that make my stomach twist. I push past the agents at my door.
"Miss, you need to—"
"That's my mother!"
I find her in the living room, collapsed on the white sofa. Her silk robe is twisted around her legs. Her perfect hair—always perfect, even first thing in the morning—hangs in her face. She's clutching her chest like she can't breathe.
"Mom!" I drop to my knees beside her. "Mom, what's wrong?"
"Your father," she chokes out. "They're arresting your father."
The words don't connect in my brain. Arresting. My father. Richard Sinclair, the man who runs meetings with millionaires. The man whose name opens doors all over New York City. The man who's never even gotten a parking ticket.
"There must be a mistake," I say. But even as I speak, I hear more voices from the hallway.
"Richard Sinclair, you're under arrest for embezzlement, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud."
My father's voice, tight with rage: "This is absurd. I demand to speak with my lawyer."
"You'll have that opportunity. Put your hands behind your back, please."
I stand up on shaking legs. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I see something that makes my blood run cold. News vans. Three of them parked on the street below, satellite dishes pointed at our building. Cameras with enormous lenses aimed upward.
At us.
At me.
"No," I whisper. "No, no, no."
But it's too late. I see the flash of camera lights even from twenty stories up. They're filming everything. Me in my pajamas. My mother falling apart. Our perfect life shattering like glass.
I run toward the hallway where my father's voice came from. An agent tries to stop me, but I dodge around him.
Dad stands in the marble entryway, hands cuffed behind his back. He's still in his pajamas too—expensive ones, monogrammed, but it doesn't matter. The handcuffs make him look small. Guilty.
His eyes meet mine, and I see something I've never seen in my father's face before.
Fear.
"Elara, baby, don't look—"
"Mr. Sinclair, let's go." The agent holding his arm pulls him toward the door.
"Wait!" I lunge forward, but another agent blocks my path. "Where are you taking him? Dad!"
"Elara, listen to me." My father's voice cuts through the noise, sharp with urgency. "Call Martin Reeves. Tell him what happened. Don't talk to anyone else. Don't say anything to the press. Do you understand?"
"I don't understand any of this!" Tears blur my vision. "What did you do?"
Something flickers across his face—shame, maybe, or regret. But the agents are already moving him through the door.
"Daddy, please!"
The last thing I see before they take him around the corner is his face, looking back at me over his shoulder. He's trying to stay calm, trying to look strong, but I can see the truth.
He's terrified.
Behind me, my mother makes a horrible sound—half gasp, half moan. I spin around just in time to see her eyes roll back in her head.
"Mom!"
She crumples sideways on the sofa. Her lips are turning blue.
"Help!" I scream. "Someone help her!"
Everything becomes a blur. Agents calling for an ambulance. Someone pushing me aside to check her pulse. Me standing there useless, watching strangers swarm around my mother while my father disappears into an elevator in handcuffs.
Through the windows, the cameras keep flashing.
The sunrise paints the sky pink and gold—beautiful and terrible and completely wrong for the worst morning of my life.
An agent touches my shoulder. "Miss Sinclair, we need to search your room now."
I look at him. Really look at him. He's young, maybe early thirties, with kind eyes that don't match what he's doing to my family.
"My father is innocent," I tell him.
He doesn't answer. But something in his expression tells me he's heard that before. From other daughters. Other families who didn't see it coming.
The paramedics arrive. They load my mother onto a stretcher, oxygen mask over her face. I try to follow, but an agent stops me.
"We need you to stay here while we complete the search."
"That's my mother!"
"We'll arrange transportation for you to the hospital shortly."
I stand there in the ruins of our penthouse—drawers hanging open, papers scattered, agents cataloging our life like evidence at a crime scene—and feel the world I knew dissolving around me.
My phone buzzes. I pull it from my pajama pocket with numb fingers.
Seventeen missed calls. Thirty-two text messages. All from numbers I don't recognize. I open one at random.
Is it true your father stole $50 million?
My legs give out. I sink to the floor right there in the hallway, my back against the wall, my phone clutched in my hands.
Another text appears: How does it feel to be the daughter of a criminal?
Then another: Did you know?
And another: Your whole family is going down.
The phone slips from my fingers and clatters to the marble floor.
Through the window, the sun rises over New York City. Just another Tuesday morning. Except for me, it's the day my entire world ended.
An agent appears in front of me. "Miss Sinclair? We found something in your father's study. You need to come see this."
I look up at him. "What?"
His face is grim. "Evidence of more accounts. More money. This goes deeper than we thought."
And somehow, impossibly, I know: this is only the beginning