Chapter 1
I woke on the icy marble floor with one hand wrapped around my belly and the other gripping a broken piece of glass.
“Stay back,” I whispered.
Victoria stood above me in her crimson velvet dress, smiling like she had already won.
“You are not fit to carry a Mercer child,” she said.
My breath came fast.
My baby kicked hard beneath my ribs.
Then Marcus burst into the dining room.
But he did not rush at Victoria.
He rushed at me.
“Elena, look at me,” he begged. “Put the glass down.”
I blinked through tears.
“What?”
His face was pale.
“Please, sweetheart. You’re holding it against yourself.”
I looked down.
The sharp edge hovered near my skin.
I screamed and dropped it.
Marcus kicked it away and pulled me into his arms.
“She was here,” I sobbed. “Victoria attacked me. She broke the table.”
Marcus looked around.
I followed his eyes.
The glass dining table was perfectly whole.
No shattered pieces.
No overturned chairs.
No Victoria.
Only a crimson velvet dress lying empty across the chair near the window.
My blood froze.
“She was wearing that.”
Marcus held me tighter.
“No one is here.”
“No. I saw her.”
Then I smelled it.
The tea.
Lavender.
Honey.
Bitter underneath.
The tea Victoria had been insisting I drink every night since I became pregnant.
“For the baby,” she always said.
My stomach turned.
“She did this.”
Marcus looked at me, terrified.
“Elena—”
“She’s been putting something in my tea.”
His mother, Victoria Mercer, had been dead for three months.
At least, that was what everyone in the estate believed.
But the dress on the chair was hers.
The scent in my cup was hers.
And the fear in my body was real.
I grabbed Marcus’s shirt.
“I’m not losing my mind.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Our housekeeper, Nora, appeared at the door, holding my tea tray.
May you like
Her face went white when she saw the dress.
Then she whispered, “Mrs. Mercer never left the estate.”
