Chapter 1 - The Girl in the Blue Dress
Victoria Whitmore seized the front of Emily's pale-blue dress so violently that the delicate fabric tore beneath her fingers.
"GET THE HELL OUT OF MY FAMILY!" she screamed.
Before Emily could wrench free, her stepmother dragged her toward the second-floor balcony railing and pushed with both hands.
At twenty-one, Emily had believed there were things she understood about danger.
She understood that people could lie while smiling and that a beautiful house could become an uncomfortable place to live.
She did not understand how quickly the ground could disappear beneath her feet.
Her white flat shoes scraped the stone, her chest struck the railing, and suddenly the golden Chicago afternoon was spinning above and below her.
She screamed as her body toppled into open air.
Below the balcony, a silver teapot sat beside two ceramic cups on a garden table.
Maya Brooks, the twenty-seven-year-old housemaid, had been collecting the cups when the scream made her look up.
For half a second, she could only stare at the young woman falling toward the lawn.
Then instinct moved her before fear could stop her.
Maya grabbed the thick rectangular cushion from a nearby garden lounge chair and dragged it beneath Emily's descending body.
There was no time to position it perfectly or guarantee anything at all.
Emily struck the cushion hard, and the impact still drove her shoulder and side painfully into the ground.
Maya lost her footing while trying to hold it steady, and both women tumbled onto the grass.
A sharp pain shot through Emily's right knee where it scraped against a stone border.
Her green eyes remained open, but she could not seem to fill her lungs.
"HELP! CALL AN AMBULANCE!" Maya shouted.
She scrambled beside Emily, careful not to move her neck or back.
"Look at me, sweetheart," she whispered, her own voice shaking.
"Don't try to get up."
Above them, Victoria leaned over the white stone railing.
The blonde woman in the crimson satin dress looked almost furious that the girl was moving.
Maya saw that expression and understood that what she had witnessed had not been an accident.
At the garden entrance, James Whitmore stopped dead.
The fifty-year-old businessman had been walking toward the afternoon tea setting, his charcoal-black suit jacket still buttoned, when he saw the final terrible instant of his daughter's fall.
He ran across the lawn with a speed he had not known he still possessed.
"Emily!"
He dropped to his knees beside her, his blue eyes fixed on the grass stains across her dress and the bloodless scrape on her knee.
"Dad," Emily managed.
The word was little more than a breath.
James clasped her hand, then looked at Maya.
"What happened?"
Maya pointed upward.
"Your wife grabbed her and pushed her over the railing."
James lifted his head.
Victoria was retreating from the balcony, her black heels moving quickly across the terrace.
For one stunned moment, the husband could not reconcile the woman above him with the words he had just heard.
Then he looked at his daughter again.
"YOU TRIED TO KILL MY DAUGHTER?!" he shouted toward the upper floor.
Emily flinched at the sound and tightened her fingers around his.
James lowered his voice immediately.
"Maya, stay with her and keep her still."
"I will, sir."
"Help is coming."
He rose and ran toward the broad exterior staircase connecting the garden with the upper terrace.
His black smartphone was already in his hand, but he was too focused on stopping Victoria from leaving to place the call yet.
He took the stairs two at a time.
Victoria was racing toward the upper hallway when he reached the landing.
A decorative marble console stood between them, crowned with a magnificent crystal vase full of white flowers.
"Move," Victoria demanded.
"Not until you explain what you did."
She glanced toward the stairs, then toward the balcony, apparently calculating which route remained open.
"Emily slipped," she said.
"Maya saw you push her."
"That servant doesn't know what she saw."
The word servant struck him almost as painfully as the sight of his daughter on the ground.
"You are not walking away from this," James said.
Victoria lunged toward his shoulder, trying to force her way into the hall.
James raised both forearms and pushed her away from his body to stop her from passing him.
She staggered backward into the marble console.
The crystal vase rocked once, slid off the edge, and shattered across the stone floor.
Flower stems scattered through the fragments.
Victoria caught herself against the table, her diamond necklace flashing as she gasped.
For the first time, her cruelty was replaced by genuine fear.
James did not strike her or advance through the broken glass.
He stepped back, keeping the staircase clear, and pointed directly at her.
"YOU'RE DONE! I'M CALLING THE COPS!"
He dialed emergency services and gave the dispatcher the address, the balcony fall, and the injuries he had seen.
The dispatcher instructed him to leave his daughter in the position where she had landed until medical responders could assess her.
James repeated the instruction to Maya over the speakerphone.
Victoria's gaze kept wandering toward the garden.
She could see Emily lying on the green lawn, conscious and sheltered by Maya's body.
She could see that her desperate attempt had failed.
But there was something else in her face, something darker than the fear of being arrested for pushing a young woman over a balcony.
James noticed it when she looked past him toward the upper hallway.
"What are you trying to protect?" he asked.
Victoria said nothing.
Below them, Emily heard the distant whine of an approaching siren.
She closed her eyes against the pain and tried to remember why she had gone onto that balcony in the first place.
She had carried no weapon, made no threat, and done nothing to deserve a hand around the front of her dress.
She had only asked one question about a folder she found in her father's study.
A question about money that was supposed to help families whose children were sick.
She remembered Victoria's red-painted nails gripping her dress.
She remembered the stepmother's final warning before the shove.
And she remembered the words she had not yet told her father.
"You were never supposed to see that account."
As the ambulance gates opened below, Emily realized that surviving the fall had only placed her at the beginning of a much larger fight.
May you like
The woman who had tried to send her over the railing was still inside the house.
And whatever Victoria had hidden upstairs was important enough that she had been willing to kill for it.
