Chapter 1 - The Sound of My Daughter Screaming

My sister-in-law shoved me so hard that my eight-months-pregnant body hit the marble floor before anybody at the wedding remembered how to move.

The first thing I heard was my six-year-old daughter screaming, "Mommy!"

The second was Maren Mercer saying, "She fell. Everybody saw her fall."

I hadn't fallen. Her palm was still burning against my collarbone.

A hundred and sixty guests stood under crystal chandeliers at the Bellweather Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. The string quartet stopped mid-song. Beyond the flowers, my brother-in-law Owen waited beside his bride, Celia, who had gone perfectly still in her white gown.

I tried to sit up. Pain ripped across my belly, and I couldn't draw a full breath.

"Don't move," a woman said.

Maren stepped between us. Her burgundy dress didn't have a wrinkle. "Laurel gets dramatic when she's upset. Give her room."

"I didn't—" My words broke apart. Something warm ran down my thigh.

Across the room, my husband, Dean, was already running. He wore the cream-colored jacket Maren had insisted all the Mercer men wear. He caught our daughter Ivy before she could fall on top of me, but she fought his arms, reaching for my face.

"She pushed Mommy," Ivy sobbed. "I saw her!"

"Dean," Maren snapped, "control your child."

Dean looked at his sister like he'd never seen her before. "Get away from my wife."

Three days earlier, I had discovered $1.8 million missing from the Mercer family's flood-relief charity. That afternoon, I'd told Maren I wasn't signing an approval form that would make those missing dollars look legitimate. At the wedding, she had cornered me beside the head table, demanding my phone and the accounting files stored on it.

I had told her no.

Now I lay on cold marble while a stranger knelt to check my pulse. I gripped the woman's wrist.

"Please," I whispered. "My baby."

Dean dropped to his knees, still holding Ivy. "Call 911! Now!"

Maren crouched beside me, smiling for the guests. She leaned close enough that only I could hear.

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"You should have handed over the phone, Laurel."

Then she turned to a man in a hotel security jacket and mouthed five words I understood perfectly: Get her phone before they come.