Chapter 1
Brenda’s hand shot into my hair before I even understood she had moved.
One second, I was standing beside the gift table at our baby shower, smiling through the strange silence in Preston’s family mansion.
The next, pain tore across my scalp.
Brenda yanked me sideways with both hands and slammed me into the edge of the table.
Glass rattled.
Wrapped presents crashed to the marble floor.
I fell hard on one knee, twisting my body so my stomach never touched the ground.
My arms wrapped around my belly.
My breath vanished.
For one terrifying second, I could not hear anything except my own heartbeat.
Then Brenda bent close enough for me to smell wine on her breath.
“This child must not be born,” she whispered.
The room froze.
Not gasped.
Not screamed.
Froze.
Because everyone had heard her.
I looked up through the hair stuck to my face and saw Preston.
My husband.
The father of my baby.
He stood beside the fireplace with his mouth open and his hands hanging at his sides.
He did not move.
He did not say my name.
He just stared.
Then a chair scraped across the floor.
Rocco turned from the men near the back wall.
They were not ordinary guests.
Everyone in Boston knew that.
Heavy coats.
Quiet eyes.
Men who did not laugh unless Rocco laughed first.
Rocco Marcelli was Preston’s father.
My father-in-law.
And the only person in that room who ran toward me.
“Audrey!”
He crossed the room so fast that two guests stumbled out of his way.
Brenda reached down for my arm.
Rocco caught her wrist before she touched me again.
His voice dropped low.
“Move away from her.”
Brenda’s face twisted.
“She is poisoning this family.”
“She is carrying my grandchild,” Rocco said.
I grabbed his sleeve with shaking fingers.
“Dad,” I whispered, because he had told me to call him that after the wedding. “She’s trying to make it look like an accident.”
Rocco’s eyes changed.
Not shocked.
Not confused.
Cold.
Brenda tried to pull her hand free.
“You believe her over me?”
“I believe what I just saw.”
Preston finally stepped forward.
“Mom, stop.”
It was weak.
Too late.
Too small.
Brenda heard it too.
She smiled.
Then she lunged past Rocco, her fingers reaching for my stomach.
I screamed.
Rocco grabbed her by both shoulders and threw her backward.
Not across the room.
Not wildly.
Just hard enough to send her crashing into the same gift table she had used against me.
The table legs screeched.
A silver tray hit the floor.
Guests recoiled.
Someone cried out.
Two bodyguards moved in front of Brenda before she could rise.
Rocco crouched beside me.
“Can you stand?”
“I don’t know.”
His jaw tightened.
“Gary.”
A gray-haired man in a black suit stepped forward from the corner. Gary Costa. Rocco’s oldest friend. The one who always noticed everything.
Gary’s face was pale.
“Rocco,” he said quietly, “she wasn’t planning this alone.”
The room went silent again.
This time, Preston stopped breathing too.
May you like
I looked at my husband.
And for the first time since I married him, I saw fear in his eyes.
