Chapter 1 - Two in the Morning
The vacuum was running at two in the morning.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
The second was my six-year-old daughter pushing it across the library rug with both hands while my three-month-old son slept against her back.
I stopped in the doorway so hard my shoulder hit the frame.
“Emma.”
She froze.
The vacuum kept whining until she fumbled for the switch. Silence dropped over the room.
My daughter looked impossibly small beside the machine. Her burgundy dress was wrinkled. One gray sneaker had come untied. A beige baby carrier crossed her chest, holding Noah securely against her back.
“Why are you awake?” I asked.
She stared at the rug.
“Emma.”
“I’m almost done.”
That answer chilled me more than if she had cried.
I stepped into the library. “Who told you to clean?”
Her fingers tightened around the vacuum handle.
“No one.”
I looked at the cloth tucked under her arm. The spray bottle on the desk. The trash bag near the shelves.
“Kids don’t vacuum libraries at two in the morning for no reason.”
She swallowed.
“I had to finish before morning.”
My jaw tightened. “Who said that?”
Her eyes flicked toward the hallway behind me.
Not toward her bedroom.
Toward the east wing.
I followed her gaze, then looked back.
“She said you weren’t supposed to know.”
For a moment, the whole mansion felt different.
Not mine.
Not safe.
I crouched beside her. “Who said that, sweetheart?”
Before she could answer, a floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Emma’s face drained of color.
A shadow moved beyond the doorway.
I stood.
“Stay here.”
Then a woman’s voice floated out of the dark.
Soft. Calm. Almost amused.
“Adrian? Why are you still awake?”
My fiancée, Vanessa Sterling, stepped into the light wearing a silk robe and the same composed expression she wore at charity dinners.
She looked at Emma.
Then at the vacuum.
May you like
Then at me.
And for half a second, before the smile returned, I saw panic.
