Chapter 1 - The Marble Foyer and the Broken Air
“Stop it, please. You’re breaking his arm.”
Lily’s scream tore through the cavernous marble foyer of the Blackwood mansion, echoing off the high vaulted ceilings like a gunshot in a cathedral.
The sound did not belong here. This was a house where voices were supposed to be kept at a civilized hum, where footsteps were muffled by expensive Persian rugs, and where the air always smelled faintly of expensive French tobacco, aged bourbon, and old money. But there was nothing civilized about the horror unfolding beside the grand double staircase.
Baby Ethan was crumpled on the cold, polished marble floor. He was crying so hard, so violently, that his little chest had seized up, his body barely able to drag air into his lungs. His skin had shifted from an angry, frantic crimson to a frightening, bluish purple around his mouth.
His cries were rapidly getting weaker, flattening out into high-pitched, desperate whimpers that carried a terrifying finality.
And Lily knew, with an icy wave of terror that swallowed every rational thought in her head, that the fourteen-month-old boy she had loved, protected, and cared for like her own flesh and blood for the past six agonizing months was slipping fast into shock.
Serena Montigue was standing over him.
She wasn't comforting him. She wasn't picking him up. With a cold, vacant look in her eyes, Serena was physically dragging him by his small, fragile left arm as if he were nothing more than a discarded rag doll caught in her path.
Lily threw herself forward without a second thought.
Her bare feet slipped on the slick, cold marble. Her hands reached out frantically toward Serena’s ankles. Her heart was pounding one single, broken prayer over and over again in her ears: Save him. Please God, save him.
She was only a few inches away when Serena reacted.
With a flash of calculated cruelty, Serena’s stiletto heel drove directly into Lily’s stomach with brutal, sickening force. The blow knocked every ounce of oxygen from Lily’s lungs, a sharp, wheezing gasp escaping her lips as she crashed backward onto the unforgiving stone floor.
Pain exploded through her abdomen, hot and blinding, stealing her vision for a fraction of a second.
She couldn't breathe. Her chest seized.
But Lily did not care about the pain. She didn't care that her ribs felt cracked or that her stomach was burning as if doused in acid.
She only cared about Ethan.
Through blurred vision, she saw the baby’s left arm hanging at a limp, unnatural, horrifying angle. His tiny face was crumpled in pure agony. His desperate sobs were fading into small, choked, pathetic sounds that no child should ever be forced to make.
Serena stood over Lily, her posture immaculate, her designer dress unwrinkled, looking down with cold, dead eyes.
This was the same woman the Chicago tabloids praised as a saint. The same woman who posed gracefully for charity galas in custom silk gowns. The same woman who played the part of the elegant, devoted fiancée to absolute perfection.
And she was also the woman who was scheduled to marry Victor Blackwood—the most powerful, ruthless, and feared mafia boss in the entire city of Chicago—in less than three weeks.
“Touch him again,” Serena said, her voice chillingly calm, devoid of any human warmth, as she casually pressed the sharp point of her stiletto heel deeper into Lily’s throbbing abdomen. “And I’ll make you disappear off the face of the earth, Lily. Nobody cares about a cheap, penniless nobody like you. You really think anyone in this city—let alone Victor—will ever believe some nameless nanny over his future wife?”
Lily could barely draw enough air into her lungs to form a whisper. The weight of Serena’s shoe felt like an anchor dragging her down into a dark, suffocating abyss.
Her limbs trembled. Her stomach burned. Her knees scraped raw against the rough edges of the marble grout as she began to move.
She couldn't breathe. She couldn't stand.
So she crawled.
May you like
One agonizing inch.
Then another.
