Chapter 1
Chapter 2: The Hammer and the Shattered Face
“You always were too stubborn for your own good, Genevieve,” Arthur whispered, the smell of cheap scotch rolling off him in waves. “You think you’re better than us because you earn a paycheck? You think you can stand there and watch your family drown while you marry into twelve figures?”
“Arthur,” I warned, backing slowly toward the dressing vanity, my hand searching blindly behind me for anything heavy—a silver hand mirror, a crystal perfume decanter. “Think very carefully about what you are doing. If you touch me—”
“If we touch you, what?” Evelyn interrupted, stepping forward to flank him, her eyes completely vacant of maternal warmth. “Who are you going to tell? Who is going to believe you over your own parents and your sister? You’ve been under immense professional strain, Gia. Everyone knows you’ve been working eighty-hour weeks. A tragic, catastrophic fall down the back service stairs… an unstable young woman suffering a complete psychotic break right before her wedding…”
“The dress first,” Bianca whined, crossing her arms, her voice devoid of a single shred of hesitation. “Don’t get her blood on the Dior lace, Daddy! I need it clean for the fittings!”
Arthur lunged.
I tried to dive to the left, but the heavy floor-length hem of the vintage gown betrayed me. The yards of stiff silk faille caught against the leg of the dressing bench. Arthur seized the delicate illusion neckline of Grandmother’s gown with his left hand.
Rrrrriiiip.
The sound of sixty-year-old hand-corded lace tearing in half was like the scream of a living thing. Freshwater pearls exploded across the room, bouncing across the polished oak floor like hail.
“No!” I shrieked, clawing at his wrists. “Stop! Arthur, stop!”
“If you won’t give it up voluntarily, we’ll make the choice for you!” Arthur snarled, his face turning an apoplectic purple. With a savage twist of his arm, he ripped the antique bodice down to the waist, shredding the priceless silk into tatters.
I swung my fist, catching him squarely across the bridge of his nose. He grunted, stumbling backward, but before I could break toward the window to scream for help, Evelyn slammed her entire weight into my back. Her manicured hands locked into my hair, yanking my head backward with agonizing force, pinning me down across the mahogany dressing bench.
“Hold still, you ungrateful wretch!” Evelyn hissed in my ear, her hot breath rank with cigarettes. “Hold her down, Bianca!”
Bianca didn’t hesitate. She threw herself onto my legs, using her knees to pin my shins against the hardwood. I thrashed wildly, bucking upward, my fingernails tearing across Evelyn’s wrist, drawing beads of crimson. Evelyn shrieked in fury and pressed her forearm directly across my windpipe, choking off my air.
Arthur recovered. The blood was dripping from his nostril, and his eyes were entirely unhinged—the manic, feral look of an animal that knows it is trapped.
“You ruined this family’s chance,” Arthur hissed, stepping over the scattered pearls. “Let’s see Alexander Sterling look at you after this.”
He raised the steel claw hammer.
I saw the arc of the swing. I saw the light from the chandelier gleam against the polished carbon steel. I tried to twist my skull aside, but Evelyn held my hair in a vise-grip.
CRACK.
The impact against my left zygomatic arch—my cheekbone—sounded like an oak branch snapping in a blizzard.
White, blinding agony exploded behind my retinas, instantly swallowing the room in a flash of pure fire. The force of the strike shattered the bone instantly, driving splintered fragments into the soft tissue of my sinus cavity. A sound tore from my throat that didn’t sound human—a wet, suffocating gasp as arterial blood erupted into my mouth, flooding my teeth and spilling over my chin.
My vision fractured into swimming double images. The world tilted sideways. I fell forward off the bench, my shoulder slamming against the floor, my face resting in a widening lake of my own blood and shredded ivory lace.
I couldn’t breathe through my nose; it was completely obstructed by fluid and broken cartilage. Every heartbeat sent a tidal wave of nauseating, concussive pressure pounding through my skull. Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear them talking.
Their voices were calm. Terrifyingly, obscenely calm.
“Is she dead?” Bianca asked. Her voice didn’t tremble. It sounded merely bored, slightly annoyed by the mess.
“No,” Arthur panted, leaning heavily against the vanity, tossing the bloody hammer onto the velvet stool. “The jaw is completely broken. Cheekbone is caved in. She won’t be speaking to anyone for months, let alone walking down an aisle in three days.”
“Check her hands,” Evelyn instructed, her breathing shallow as she inspected a torn fingernail. “Get the ring.”
I felt small, manicured fingers pry open my limp, trembling left hand. Bianca tugged ruthlessly at my fourth finger. Because of the swelling, the band resisted, scraping against the bruised knuckle until she yanked it free with a sickening pop of skin.
“Look at it,” Bianca giggled, sliding the massive Ceylon sapphire onto her own middle finger. “It fits me better anyway. Alexander has magnificent taste.”
“Arthur, call Dr. Henderson,” Evelyn directed, smoothing down her skirt as though she had just finished dusting a bookshelf. “Use the private cell. Tell him Genevieve tripped over the bridal train near the mezzanine balustrade and took a catastrophic fall down the stairs. Tell him she is concussed, hysterical, and incoherent. We need her admitted under heavy sedation to the private surgical wing at St. Jude’s—no visitors, no press. By the time she wakes up from reconstructive surgery, the wedding will be over, and Bianca will be Mrs. Alexander Sterling.”
“What about Alexander?” Arthur muttered, wiping his bloody nose with a silk handkerchief.
“I will call him myself from the car,” Evelyn replied smoothly. “I’ll tell him Gia had a nervous breakdown over the public pressure, admitted she was still in love with her college ex, and fled the country in shame. And when he is standing at that altar on Saturday, humiliated and devastated in front of two hundred of the world’s most powerful people, Bianca will step forward to save his family name. He is a proud man. He will take the lifeline to avoid the public scandal.”
Evelyn walked toward the door. As she passed my head, her designer pump stepped directly through the pool of blood spreading from my cheek. She paused, looking down at her heel with a click of her tongue.
“Ruined my suede,” she muttered. “Arthur, clean up this mess.”
They walked out. The heavy deadbolt clicked shut.
I was left alone in the darkening room, drowning in my own blood.
The pain was a physical entity, pressing down on my chest like an anvil. My consciousness was fraying at the edges, flickering like a dying filament. Yield, a dark voice whispered in the back of my brain. Just close your eyes. Just yield to the dark.
No.
Grandmother Helena’s voice cut through the fog of agony: A building doesn’t fall because of the storm, Genevieve. It falls because it yields to the fracture. You do not yield.
I forced my right eye open. The left was completely swollen shut, a balloon of bruised tissue. My gaze drifted upward toward the high, coffered ceiling.
There, nestled inside the antique brass housing of the decorative smoke detector directly above the vanity, was a pinhole lens.
Six months ago, after noticing several of Helena’s antique gold compacts and diamond brooches disappearing from the manor’s third-floor display cases, I had personally installed hardwired, continuous 4K surveillance cameras throughout the salon and the gallery. It wasn’t connected to the Vance household Wi-Fi. It ran on an independent cellular gateway that I paid for myself, continuously syncing high-definition video and audio to an encrypted, biometric private cloud server hosted by—of all entities—Aegis Global.
Every second of the assault. Arthur’s face. Evelyn’s instructions. Bianca sliding the stolen ring onto her finger. The hammer. The blood. Every single frame had been captured in crystal-clear, uncompressed resolution.
With agonizing slowness, fighting the black waves pulling me toward oblivion, I dragged my right hand toward the inner pocket of my heavy denim work jacket lying discarded beneath the vanity.
May you like
My fingers brushed the glass of my smartphone.
My jaw was splintered, my blood was soaking the floorboards, but my thumb still possessed a heartbeat. I pressed the screen, swiped by muscle memory, and engaged the emergency remote duress sequence.
