Million Pounds and a Lie

Lucia Ashworth has everything—wealth, elegance, a future without limits. But her family's fortune is a beautiful illusion, their mansion mortgaged to the last brick. Desperate and ambitious, she stages her own kidnapping, demanding a million-pound ransom from her parents. The plan is flawless. Until it isn't. When her two accomplices—innocent students Tim and Diana—demand a larger share of the money, greed turns to violence. A knife finds a chest. A skull meets a fireplace. And Lucia makes a choice that cannot be undone. Twenty months later, a lonely photographer exploring an abandoned building discovers two bodies. Detectives Peter John and Christina Wu follow a cold trail of missing persons, hidden money, and a kidnapping that never happened. *A Million Pounds and a Lie* is a chilling psychological crime novel about the weight of a single choice, the poison of greed, and the truth that refuses to stay buried.