Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DYING
"LET GO OF MY GRANDDAUGHTER."
My voice cut through the ballroom just as Vanessa Sterling-Swift raised her hand to slap a three-year-old child.
The orchestra stopped. A hundred conversations died. Vanessa froze with Maya's tiny wrist clenched between her diamond-covered fingers.
Six months ago, my son Julian had vanished at sea. Three weeks ago, Vanessa had told the world I was dying in a Swiss clinic. Yet there I stood beneath the chandeliers in a black suit, snow melting off my shoulders, with four members of my private security team behind me.
"Evelyn?" Vanessa whispered.
"You heard me."
Maya looked up. Her little face was wet with tears. A bruise darkened her wrist, and one knee was bleeding through her tights.
"Grandma?" she asked, as though she was afraid I might vanish too.
I crossed the marble floor. Men who had negotiated billion-dollar deals with me stepped out of my way without being asked.
"She was having a tantrum," Vanessa said quickly. "I was taking her upstairs."
"There is a black van outside the east door. Why?"
Her eyes flicked toward Garrick, the enormous man holding that door open.
"A delivery," she said.
"At a winter gala? With its engine running?"
I reached Maya and knelt. My knees objected, but I hardly noticed. "Sweetheart, may I hold you?"
She threw her arms around my neck so hard I nearly fell. "Don't let her take me."
I stood with Maya against my chest. Her heart hammered like a frightened bird.
"Close the gates," I told my head of protection, Theo Grant. "Nobody leaves until we know where that van was going. Call the police."
Vanessa's perfect smile collapsed.
"You can't do that. This is my home now."
I looked at the portraits of generations of Swifts watching from the walls. "No, Vanessa. You've been living in my home. There's a difference."
Garrick tried to slip through the east door. Theo's men stopped him. A driver outside abandoned the van and ran into the snow.
Then Theo opened the vehicle's back doors and found a child's pink suitcase beside a sealed envelope.
May you like
Across the envelope, in my missing son's unmistakable handwriting, were five words:
IF MAYA GOES, I DIE.
