Chapter 1 - The Kick Nobody Saw Coming

Vanessa Sterling tried to put a six-inch heel through my face in front of two hundred people.

I leaned back. The black stiletto sliced past my nose, close enough for me to smell the leather. Someone screamed. A violinist hit a note that sounded like a cat getting stepped on.

"You little bitch!" Vanessa shouted.

She was the bride-to-be, the heiress, and the reason the ballroom smelled like fifty thousand dollars' worth of white roses. I was the waitress holding an empty champagne tray. That's how she wanted everyone to see us.

"Vanessa, stop!" a man called from the stairs.

Adrian Vale, her fiance, came running in his midnight-blue tuxedo. Too late.

Vanessa kicked again. This time she aimed lower, trying to drive her heel into my knee. I stepped aside, pivoted on my left foot, and caught her thigh with the flat of my shoe. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough to send her sprawling across the marble in a storm of champagne and broken glass.

The orchestra died. Her father, Conrad Sterling, rose slowly from his chair near the fireplace. I had spent seventeen years imagining that face. In person, his eyes were smaller than I remembered.

"You're fired!" Vanessa screeched from the floor. "I'll make sure you never work in this city again!"

I straightened my vest. "That's funny. Your father said almost the same thing to mine."

Adrian stopped two steps away. Conrad's hand tightened around his drink.

I took an old photograph out of my apron. A younger Conrad stood in front of a building called Bellwether Children's Center. Beside him was my father, Daniel Reyes, smiling as though the world had never lied to him. The third person had been cut from the version printed in the newspapers.

Vanessa stared at that third face. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Seventeen years ago," I said, "your family destroyed my father. Tonight I'm going to show everyone why."

"Security!" Vanessa shouted. "Take her phone. Don't let her leave!"

Adrian grabbed her wrist. "Vanessa. Tell me that photograph isn't what I think it is."

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I looked him straight in the eye. "Ask her who signed the papers."

Then Conrad lifted one finger. Every exit in the ballroom clicked shut.