“Maybe,” I said. “Why would Dad keep a first wife on the side, though? Why not just divorce her and marry Mom?”

“I may know why,” Mom said quietly.

All gazes flew to her.

“I signed a contract before our marriage,” she said.

“A pre-nup?” Lacey asked.

“No. I refused to sign a pre-nup. In retrospect, that was a mistake. I could have protected myself as well as your father. But I did sign a confidentiality agreement.”

“Why?” Lacey asked. “Why would you need to keep anything confidential before you were married?”

Mom cleared her throat. “I had some money. Not just some, actually. A lot of it.”

“We know that,” I said.

Our mother had come from rich Massachusetts politicians. She’d been worth millions, until her father lost it all in a sham oil investment overseas. This wasn’t new information. Still, she’d had a hefty trust fund when she married Dad.

“Your great-grandfather, who you never knew, was corrupt as they came,” Mom said. “He laundered all his money through Europe, and somehow, it ended up in a trust fund for yours truly.”

“What?” Rock said. “You’re not talking about your original trust fund?”

Mom nodded.

“What money?” Rock went on. “How did he—”

“He was a politician in cahoots with the mafia,” she said. “Your grandparents—my mom and dad—never talked about it. Somehow, all his laundered money ended up mine.”

“Why would he give it all to you?” I asked.

She sighed. “I was his favorite. Unfortunately.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “It wasn’t your father who…”

“No,” she said sullenly. “It was my grandfather.”

“Close your eyes and think of diamonds,” Riley said quietly, her eyes full of anger.

Mom cleared her throat. “Anyway, Derek found out somehow about the nearly a billion dollars that would come to me on my twenty-fifth birthday. Mind you, even I didn’t know about it at the time. My parents never told me.”

“Did they even know?”

“Maybe they didn’t. I have no idea. Once they found out how corrupt Grandpa Larson was, they cut him out of our lives.”

“How old were you then?” I asked.

She breathed in. “I was fifteen, Reid. Fifteen. My grandfather had been molesting me since I was seven.”

Silence for a few moments.

None of us wanted to think about what a degenerate had done to our mother, but personally I couldn’t forgive her for not helping Riley.

Neither could Riley, evidently.

“Fuck you, Mom.” Riley stood, her fists clenched.

“Hey, honey,” Matt soothed. “It’s okay.”

“What about any of this is okay, Matt?” Riley yelled.

“None of this is okay,” Matt said. “But we need to get to the bottom of your father’s murder. After that, you can decide how to deal with your relationship with your mother.”

Riley sat down. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”