Chapter 1 - THE DOOR OPENED
I remained on the floor with the phone pressed against my ear.
My father kept talking.
He asked me simple questions that required simple answers.
My full name.
The color of the sofa.
The number of windows in the room.
The last meal I remembered eating.
At first, I thought the questions were pointless.
Then I understood.
He was keeping me conscious.
“Tell me what you see, Clare.”
“The orchids.”
“What color are they?”
“White.”
“Good.”
His voice was steady, but I heard the engine roaring behind him.
I heard a horn.
I heard someone beside him speaking rapidly into another phone.
Then the private elevator outside the penthouse chimed.
Fear shot through me so violently that I forgot how to breathe.
“He came back.”
My father’s voice sharpened.
“Look at the security monitor.”
I forced my head upward.
The small screen beside the entryway showed three men in dark suits.
One of them held a medical bag.
“Henderson,” my father said.
“Let them in.”
My fingers could not reach the control panel.
I whispered the entry code instead.
The door opened seconds later.
Henderson crossed the room first.
I remembered him from childhood as my father’s quiet head of security.
He had taught me how to ride a bicycle on the long gravel driveway behind our house.
His hair was silver now.
The moment he saw me beside the shattered vase, his entire face changed.
He dropped to one knee.
“Miss Clare.”
I had not heard anyone call me that in seven years.
Two emergency medics entered behind him.
They moved carefully around the broken glass.
One placed a brace around my neck.
The other examined my wrist and asked where the pain was worst.
I nearly laughed.
There was no worst place.
Pain had become one continuous landscape.
Henderson saw the cane on the ivory sofa.
His jaw tightened.
“Do not touch it,” I whispered.
He looked at me.
“Evidence.”
Something in his expression shifted.
Not pity.
Respect.
He stood and ordered one of the guards to secure the room until the police arrived.
The medics lifted me onto a stretcher.
The movement tore a cry from my throat.
My father heard it through the phone.
“Clare.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m almost there.”
The elevator doors opened again before they could carry me out.
My father stepped into the penthouse.
William Sterling had aged since the night I walked away from his house.
His hair was almost completely white.
The lines around his mouth were deeper.
His shoulders were still straight.
His dark overcoat hung open over a formal dinner jacket, as though he had abandoned some event halfway through the first course.
He stopped when he saw me.
For one terrible moment, the most powerful man I had ever known looked completely helpless.
His eyes moved over the swelling on my face.
The brace around my wrist.
The torn silk.
The blood beneath my hands.
Then he looked at the cane.
I watched anger enter him.
It did not explode.
It froze.
He crossed the room and placed one hand against my hair.
His touch was so gentle that I began crying again.
“I should have called you sooner,” I whispered.
“You called.”
His voice broke on the final word.
“That is all that matters tonight.”
A police officer entered and asked who owned the apartment.
“I do,” I said.
My father glanced at me but did not interrupt.
The officer asked who had attacked me.
“Matthew Hayes.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where he went?”
I closed my eyes.
The perfume on his collar returned to me.
The property notice.
The blue sock.
“Lauren Thorne.”
My father’s hand became still.
He knew the name.
I saw it immediately.
“What is it?” I asked.
He looked toward Henderson.
Henderson lowered his eyes.
My father leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
“Lauren Thorne is NexusCore’s chief financial officer.”
“I know.”
“She signed documents this afternoon moving forty-eight million dollars out of the company’s primary reserve account.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath me.
“Where?”
“We are about to find out.”
My father lifted his phone.
May you like
Five minutes earlier, I had called him to save my life.
Now he was making the call that would begin destroying Matthew’s empire.
