Billionaire Leaves His Entire Fortune to His Dog—Then a Hidden Chip Reveals the Truth

Chapter 2

Three days earlier, the floodlights had turned the Fielding estate into a stage.

Evelyn remembered the weight of the velvet in the study, the way the chandelier light clung to the mahogany like honey to a knife, the roar of cameras held at bay beyond the tall windows by a wall of security. She had not slept the night before. She had not been able to stop reading the document that lay sealed in her briefcase, the ink of which would set the country’s teeth on edge.

Arthur Fielding had been seventy-one when he died in his sleep — so read the official story — three days before, at two in the morning, in the great bed of the master suite, a peaceful expression on his face, an empty glass of warm milk by his elbow. The doctor had signed the certificate without a second glance. Heart. Old age. The sort of death that made mourners shrug and lawyers sharpen their pencils.

Except Arthur Fielding had been a man who planned everything — Evelyn knew that better than anyone alive. And the document he had left behind planned this.

The study door had swung open, and Julian — Malcolm, she reminded herself now, the name inked so deeply into the memory of that room — had entered like a bull entering a ring. Malcolm Fielding, forty-one, known to the tabloids as the Golden Son, known to his father’s staff as the man who checked their references but never their names. He had planted himself before her desk, his Oxfords grinding into the Persian rug, his face a deepening shade of red that had nothing to do with the warmth of the room.

“Read it,” he had said. Not asked. Read it.