Chapter 1 - The Girl With the Axe
"THAT'S NOT THE BRIDE!"
Five-year-old Willa Ashcroft came flying down the wedding aisle with a little axe in both hands. Her ivory flower-girl dress dragged across the red carpet. Two hundred guests turned. The organist missed a note.
"Willa!" Adrian shouted from the altar. "Put that down!"
His little sister didn't stop. She ran straight past him and swung at the twelve-foot wall of red roses behind the bridal platform. The wooden lattice cracked. She struck it again. A third blow sent a whole panel down in a storm of flowers.
Something moved behind the roses.
A woman in a wedding gown stumbled into view. Her wrists were tied together. A white cloth was wedged between her lips. She stared at Adrian with terrified, unmistakable blue eyes.
Tessa. His Tessa.
The bride beside him jerked away and covered her face.
"Take off the mask!" Willa cried. "Adrian, she stole Tessa's face!"
Adrian caught the edge of a loose silicone seam beneath the false bride's veil. He pulled. A carefully painted face peeled away, exposing an older man with gray hair, a crooked nose, and a white scar running from ear to jaw.
A scream went through the chapel. Chairs scraped. Somebody dropped a champagne glass.
Adrian couldn't speak. He stood frozen.
His father could speak, though. Gideon Ashcroft, standing beside the front pew, whispered one name.
"Silas?"
The stranger smiled with cracked lips. "Hello, Gideon. Still good at burying people?"
Adrian hurried to Tessa, tearing the cloth from her mouth. She gulped air and caught his sleeve.
"Don't let him near Willa," she rasped. "And don't let your father leave."
His mother, Alisa, turned to Gideon. "You know this man?"
Gideon's skin had gone gray. "Silas Rook died thirty-one years ago."
May you like
The old man in the stolen wedding dress raised one shaking finger toward him.
"That's what you told her," Silas said. "Now tell Alisa who you left inside the fire."
