Chapter 1
“Daddy…” Lucy sobbed. “But I’m a human being.”
Those words stopped my heart before I even reached the breakfast room.
I had come home early from a business trip to Boston.
Bianca thought I would not be back until midnight.
Marcus Hale thought so too.
That was why they were laughing.
That was why my six-year-old daughter was on her knees beside the marble breakfast table, shaking in her pink pajamas, with a silver dog bowl pushed in front of her.
For one second, my body would not move.
My hand stayed frozen on the doorframe.
Lucy turned her wet face toward me, and the shame in her eyes did something to me I still cannot explain.
She was not only scared.
She looked embarrassed.
Like she thought I might believe she deserved it.
Bianca, my fiancée, stood above her in a white silk robe, holding a spoon between two fingers like she was touching something dirty.
Marcus leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, smiling like this was entertainment.
“Say it again,” Bianca snapped at Lucy.
Lucy’s bottom lip trembled.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” Bianca said. “Say what I told you to say.”
Marcus laughed under his breath.
Lucy looked at the bowl.
“I eat where bad girls eat.”
My vision blurred.
“Bianca.”
My voice came out so low that everyone went still.
Bianca spun around.
Her face changed instantly.
The cruelty disappeared.
Tears appeared so fast they looked practiced.
“Vittorio,” she gasped. “You’re home.”
Lucy tried to crawl toward me.
Bianca grabbed her shoulder.
I saw red.
“Take your hand off my daughter.”
Bianca let go like Lucy had burned her.
Lucy ran into my arms.
I lifted her so fast she made a little sound of pain.
That sound nearly dropped me to my knees.
“What did they do to you?” I whispered.
Lucy buried her face in my neck.
“I tried to be good.”
Near the doorway, Emma Clark stood trembling.
Our housekeeper had one hand over her mouth.
In the other, she held her phone.
At first I thought she had just walked in.
Then she turned the screen toward me.
“Mr. DeLuca,” she whispered, “you need to see this.”
Bianca’s face drained.
“Emma, don’t.”
Emma pressed play.
The video showed the same room earlier that morning.
Lucy was standing in the corner with her teddy bear in both hands.
Bianca yanked the bear away.
Marcus stood beside the coffee machine, laughing.
“She needs discipline,” Marcus said on the recording.
Bianca shoved the dog bowl across the floor.
“Then teach her.”
Lucy cried and backed away.
Bianca grabbed her arm and forced her down.
“Your father is not here,” she hissed. “And when I marry him, this becomes my house.”
Marcus walked to the door.
He looked straight into the hallway.
Then he closed it.
I felt Lucy shaking against my chest.
The real Marcus suddenly lunged for Emma’s phone.
Emma screamed.
I shifted Lucy behind Emma and stepped in front of them.
Marcus swung at me.
I caught his arm.
For years, I had kept my hands clean because I wanted to be a different kind of man than my father.
But that morning, restraint left me.
I drove Marcus backward.
He crashed through the antique map rack my grandfather had brought from Sicily, splintering wood and sending rolled maps across the floor.
Bianca screamed.
“Vittorio, he attacked you!”
I turned on her.
She reached for Lucy again, fingers stretched like claws.
I knocked her hand away.
“Don’t touch her.”
She stumbled backward, but still tried to grab my sleeve.
“She lies,” Bianca cried. “Children lie when they want attention.”
I struck her away from me, not hard enough to break her, but hard enough to send her collapsing onto the leather ottoman.
The room went silent except for Lucy’s crying.
I picked up the dog bowl.
Bianca’s eyes followed it.
I placed it on the floor directly in front of her bare feet.
Then I looked at the woman I had planned to marry in three weeks.
“Enjoy your last meal.”
Bianca went pale.
Marcus groaned from the broken rack.
Emma was crying quietly now, the phone still in her shaking hand.
I looked at the screen again.
The video had not started when I entered.
It had started much earlier.
Before Lucy said those words.
Before Bianca forced her down.
Before Marcus closed the door.
Emma had not been surprised by what happened that morning.
She had been waiting.
Waiting with proof.
May you like
And when I looked into her terrified eyes, I understood the worst part.
This was not the first time.
