Next Of Kin

"The most efficient lock ever invented is the one the prisoner believes she installed herself."

Greta Sinclair is a meticulous hospital administrator whose life is ordered, predictable, and exact. But when her estranged brother Nolan dies in a fiery car crash on a New Hampshire mountain road, the careful structure of her world collapses. Inside a bank vault, Greta finds seven driver's licenses bearing Nolan's face, six aliases, and a list of six women he married.

Driven to understand the brother she thought she knew, Greta uncovers a staggering fifteen-year fraud operation. Nolan was a mirror, reflecting whatever these vulnerable women needed to see, while siphoning $1.35 million into a mysterious offshore trust. But Nolan wasn't the architect of this elaborate scheme. He was just the face.

As Greta digs deeper, the evidence points closer to home. The fake identities, the offshore accounts, and the chillingly detailed surveillance playbooks weren't created by a master con artist-they were built by her mother, Vivienne. A retired bookkeeper known for her flawless lemon cake and unwavering composure, Vivienne has spent decades treating her children not as family, but as assets to be managed.

When Greta closes in on the truth behind her brother's fatal "accident," she realizes her mother hasn't just been hiding a criminal empire-she has already laid a trap to frame Greta for it. To survive, Greta must dismantle the foundation of her entire life and confront the woman who built it.