Chapter 1 - The Run
“Daddy, don’t let her take me back!”
Richard Sterling had heard his two-year-old daughter cry before. He had heard her cry over scraped knees, bad dreams, peas she refused to eat, and the tragic disappearance of a stuffed rabbit that had been under her blanket the entire time.
This was different.
Maya was running like someone was behind her.
Her bare feet slapped against the cold marble floor of the Sterling estate. Her pink lace dress twisted around her legs. A silk bow hung loose from her brown hair. Her small arms reached for Richard as if he were the only solid thing left in the world.
He dropped to his knees.
“Maya.”
She crashed into him and clung to his neck.
“Daddy.” Her voice broke. “No room. No red room.”
Richard froze.
“What red room?”
Maya buried her face in his tuxedo and shook.
Behind her, Victoria Vance appeared at the end of the hallway.
She looked flawless. Wine-red velvet gown. Diamonds at her throat. Dark hair pinned perfectly. In six weeks she was supposed to become Richard’s wife.
She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes.
“There you are,” Victoria said. “Maya had another tantrum.”
Richard stood, lifting his daughter into his arms.
“She’s terrified.”
“She’s two.” Victoria gave a patient little laugh. “Two-year-olds are terrified of bathwater if the bubbles look wrong.”
Maya tightened her grip.
“No Vicky.”
Victoria’s jaw flickered.
Richard noticed it.
He also noticed something else.
A faint red mark circled Maya’s wrist.
His voice changed.
“What happened to her arm?”
Victoria glanced down once. “She pulled away from me near the stairs. I caught her before she fell. You should be thanking me.”
Maya whimpered.
Richard had spent twenty years reading men who lied across mahogany conference tables. He knew the pause before a fabricated answer. The overexplaining. The casual insult meant to make the questioner feel foolish.
Yet this was Victoria.
The woman who had held him through grief after Maya’s mother died.
The woman he had trusted with the one person he loved more than his own life.
“Maya,” he said softly, “did Victoria hurt you?”
Victoria’s face hardened.
“Richard. Don’t ask a toddler leading questions.”
Maya lifted her head.
Her eyes were wet and enormous.
Then she pointed down the hallway behind Victoria.
“Ella,” she whispered. “Ella crying too.”
Richard looked up sharply.
Ella Morales was Maya’s nanny.
And she had not been seen all evening.
May you like
“Where is Ella?” he asked.
For the first time that night, Victoria did not answer immediately.
