In the middle of the night, Thelma Hardy gets a 10 second call from her father: her mother’s dead. She must fly to Palm Beach. The company jet is waiting.
Thelma has little time for sorrow. The stock of Wise Woman Inc. is plummeting, and the eyes of the financial world are watching and waiting. Her father has appointed a male CEO, Steve, breaking with the firm’s tradition of female leadership and enraging the members of the board.
To make matters worse, Thelma’s best friend Lauren manages to miss the funeral, and her longtime friend Cindy decides this is a good time to confess her love for her.
Lauren, an MIT computer wizard, has in fact been there all along. Hours after her mother’s death, there is a mysterious hacking of the company’s firewall. The source is untraceable and the timing dangerous. The firm’s main rival is suspect, and Lauren has come to help identify the attacker.
As Thelma becomes more involved in the business, she finds hints that her father and Steve may be part of a scheme to rob her of her inheritance, and that her mother may not have died of natural causes. Steve realizes Thelma is onto more than he expected and has her followed.
When Thelma mistakenly kills an innocent man, jeopardizing the firms future, Steve decides to take care of the cover-up, and of Thelma as well: he sends her to oversee some factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, from where she is not meant to return. She tricks her way out of the trap and returns to Palm Beach, determined to discover the truth about her mother’s death and save her legacy.
With her wits, which many think she is losing, as her only guide, Thelma ventures into a maze of dark family lies and financial intrigue. As she searches for a way out, she will revisit her mother’s struggle for empowerment, transform her idle socialite toys into weapons, and take ownership of her life.