NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Danielle Steel comes the gripping story of a woman who loses everything—her husband, her home, her sense of self and safety, and her freedom. Sydney Wells’s perfect life with her wealthy, devoted husband vanishes when he dies suddenly in an accident. Widowed at forty-nine, she discovers he has failed to include her in his will. With Andrew’s vicious daughters in control of his estate, and no home or money, Sydney finds a job in fashion, despite her own designer daughters’ warnings. Naïve, out of her element, and alone in a world of shady international deals and dishonest people, she is set up by her boss and finds herself faced with criminal prosecution. What happens when you lose everything? Husband, safety, protection, money, and reputation gone, faced with prison, Sydney must rebuild her life from the bottom to the top again, with honor, resourcefulness, and dignity. Sydney finds herself, as well as courage and resilience. Taking life by the horns, she revives her own career as a talented designer, from New York to Hong Kong, risking all in an exotic, unfamiliar world. She is determined to forge a new life she can be proud of. Praise for Danielle Steel “Steel is one of the best!” — Los Angeles Times “Few modern writers convey the pathos of family and material life with such heartfelt empathy.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “Steel pulls out all the emotional stops. . . . She delivers!” — Publishers Weekly “What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity.” — San Francisco Chronicle Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Past Perfect, Fairytale, The Right Time, The Duchess, Against All Odds, Dangerous Games, The Mistress, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood. Chapter 1 Staring out at the summer rain, Sydney Wells felt as though she were swimming underwater. For the past eight days she had been in shock. Her husband of sixteen years, Andrew, had gone off to do an errand on his favorite motorcycle, on a back road with little traffic near their Connecticut home. He had a passion for fast cars and vintage motorcycles, and had been riding one of his best ones, a Ducati. He had promised to be back in minutes, but four hours later, he still wasn’t home. She imagined he had met up with a friend, or thought of other errands once he was out and enjoying the ride on the warm summer day. He hadn’t answered his cellphone when she called him. The highway patrol said later that he’d hit a wet spot on the road, and some gravel. He’d been wearing his helmet but the strap wasn’t fastened. He was going such a short distance. The bike had slid, his helmet had flown off. They told her he had been dead on impact. At fifty-six. And Sydney was a widow at forty-nine. Everything had an unreal quality to it. Nothing looked familiar, none of it seemed possible, and it seemed even less so once his lawyer came to see her. Andrew had been the head of the investment firm he’d inherited from his father and had been a responsible husband, the father of thirty-three-year-old twin daughters by his first marriage, and stepfather to Sydney’s two daughters, Sabrina and Sophie. They’d had what she considered the perfect marriage, and had expected to grow old together. Sixteen years seemed like but an instant now. She had made it through the funeral with her daughters on either side of her. Her stepdaughters, Kyra and Kellie, were in a pew across the aisle with their mother, Marjorie, who had flown in from L.A., and Kellie’s husband, Geoff, shepherding them along. They lived nearby and had left their three- and five-year-old sons at home. Kyra lived in New York with her current boyfriend in the West Village brownstone her father had bought her at twenty-five. To keep things fair to both his daughters, he had purchased Kellie the house she wanted in Connecticut, near his own, at the same time. She’d been recently married at the time, wanted babies, and preferred a country life, but with the birth of their second child, the house was too small for them now, and they’d been talking about upgrading for a while, with her father’s help of course. Their mother, Marjorie, Andrew’s first wife, had moved to L.A. after the divorce eighteen years before, a year before Andrew met Sydney. So Sydney had played no part in their separation, nor the dissolution of their marriage, nor the enormous settlement Andrew had given Marjorie. He was a generous man, even to the woman who remained bitter and angry for two decades after he left her. The marriage had simply died. She was an unhappy