Ella Foster is raised in the foster system in Kansas, holding just a ring stamped with initials and an old picture of her birth mother. A dying foster mother finally tells her the truth: her father is William Ashton, a powerful Manhattan property tycoon, and her mother was driven to death by William's wife, Victoria. At twenty-three she goes to New York to learn how her mother died and to claim what is hers.
At a charity gala she presents the ring and DNA evidence, and within days she is acknowledged and moves into the family mansion. Then the war begins, with a stepmother who is elegant and ruthless, a greedy stepbrother, and a jealous stepsister. Ella gathers evidence and hacks into money-laundering records, and the boardroom turns against them. Nick Castro, the group's COO and a former federal prosecutor, has been investigating the stepbrother's network all along and joins her as an ally.
