Chapter 1 - The Fall That Broke the Family
The last thing I saw before I fell was my stepmother's red lipstick curling into a smile.
Her hands tightened around the shoulders of my pale blue satin dress, twisting the fabric until its seams dug into my skin.
"GET THE HELL OUT OF MY FAMILY!" she screamed.
Then Vanessa Whitmore drove both palms against my chest and shoved me over the glass railing of our second-floor balcony.
For one suspended instant I saw the illuminated swimming pool beneath me and the dark Chicago sky beyond it.
My feet searched for a floor that was no longer there.
Air tore through my hair, and a terrified sound escaped my throat before the turquoise water swallowed it.
The impact emptied my lungs and turned the world into a rushing blur of bubbles.
I was twenty-one years old, and I had just been thrown from my father's mansion by the woman who promised to treat me like her own daughter.
My name is Ava Whitmore.
My father, Daniel Whitmore, was forty-eight and had built a fortune from commercial property, manufacturing, and an investment company that seemed to touch every prominent address in Chicago.
Vanessa was his second wife, thirty-nine, glamorous, persuasive, and expert at making cruelty look like concern.
That night she wore a fitted crimson designer gown, diamond earrings, and black heels that clicked against marble like a countdown.
I had worn blue because it was my late mother's favorite color.
Our mansion was hosting an evening reception for investors, neighbors, and donors, but none of the glittering people downstairs knew the argument happening above them.
Vanessa had followed me onto the balcony after finding me in my father's private study.
I had gone there for a photograph of my mother to show an old family friend.
Instead, I had found a folder with my name printed on a document I had never signed.
I photographed the first page with my phone because the words made my stomach tighten.
Vanessa appeared before I could read the rest.
"You don't belong in that room," she told me.
I said my father's study was not forbidden to his daughter.
She looked at the screen in my hand and demanded that I delete whatever I had seen.
When I refused, her smile disappeared, and the argument moved toward the open balcony door.
Now, underwater, I could not remember whether I still held the phone.
I could remember only her hands and the terrifying certainty that she had meant to push me.
My dress tangled around my knees as I kicked toward a surface that seemed impossibly far away.
Light fractured above me.
I broke through, coughed violently, and tried to call for help, but water rushed into my mouth.
On the terrace, my father had been speaking with his bodyguard, Marcus Reed, near the pool entrance.
Marcus was thirty-six, broad-shouldered, quiet, and the one person in the household whose attention never wavered when someone looked frightened.
My father heard the splash and turned just as I surfaced.
"OH MY GOD! MY DAUGHTER!" he shouted.
His face changed so completely that I barely recognized him.
There was no businessman left in those gray eyes, only a father who feared he was watching his child die.
He sprinted across the marble and jumped into the pool fully dressed.
A second enormous splash rolled toward me.
His black shirt and charcoal trousers darkened instantly, and he swam hard enough that the water slapped against the tile.
When my legs weakened, I felt his arm secure my upper body.
"I've got you," he said against my wet hair.
"Ava, stay with me."
He lifted my face above the water and kept it there while I gasped and clung to him.
Marcus dropped to his knees at the nearest pool exit, extending both arms.
My father guided me toward him, and Marcus lifted me carefully onto the terrace while calling for medical help.
My whole body shook, and I could not stop coughing.
Water poured from my dress across the white marble.
"Keep breathing slowly," Marcus told me, removing his jacket to cover my shoulders.
"Help is coming."
My father climbed out beside us, soaked from his hair to his shoes.
He checked my face with trembling hands, then looked upward.
I followed his gaze just long enough to see Vanessa retreating from the balcony.
She was pulling the framed glass door closed, trying to make the upstairs room look empty.
My father's expression hardened.
"YOU TRIED TO KILL MY DAUGHTER!" he roared.
I wanted to explain, but my throat burned and the sound would not come.
He looked back at Marcus, who was supporting my weight and giving our address to the emergency dispatcher.
Only when Marcus assured him that I was safely out of the water did my father rise.
He ran toward the short exterior staircase connecting the terrace to the balcony.
His wet shoes struck the stone steps, one after another, while Vanessa fought with the door handle above.
At the upper landing she slammed the glass door and stepped backward into the room.
My father reached it and drove one powerful kick against the lower frame.
The door burst inward with a sound that carried across the garden.
Vanessa stumbled into the decorative table, sending an expensive glass vase crashing onto the marble.
Flowers scattered, water spread beneath the table, and her diamond earrings flashed as she turned in terror.
My father stopped several feet from her.
He did not strike her.
He pointed at her with a shaking hand and said, "YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!"
Sirens began sounding beyond the mansion gates.
Below, Marcus held me upright while the last of the party guests came rushing outside.
I watched the upstairs doorway through rain-blurred eyes, although it was only pool water running down my face.
A guest whispered that I must have slipped.
Another asked why Vanessa was crying.
And there, in the center of all that noise, I remembered the document in my father's study.
My name had been printed beneath a line labeled BENEFICIARY CONSENT.
The signature below it was supposed to be mine.
I had never put it there.
Before the ambulance arrived, I grabbed Marcus's sleeve and whispered, "Tell Dad she wasn't only trying to hurt me."
Marcus bent closer.
"What else was she doing?"
May you like
I forced the next words through my burning throat.
"She was trying to make me disappear from the family on paper, too."
