CHAPTER 1
Michael Harrington heard his daughter cry before he reached the kitchen.
Not the loud cry children make when they want attention.
This was smaller.
Broken.
The kind of cry that tried not to be heard.
He was halfway down the long white hallway when Lily’s voice cracked from the kitchen.
“Please don’t make me.”
Michael stopped breathing.
Then he ran.
His gray suit jacket snapped behind him as he sprinted past the white doors and gold-framed mirrors. His shoes slipped once on the glossy marble floor, but he caught himself and kept moving.
“Lily!” he shouted.
The house had never felt this long before.
At the end of the hallway, the kitchen glowed bright and spotless, all white marble and glass pendant lights, the kind of room Vanessa loved showing off to guests.
But the silence inside it was wrong.
Michael turned sharply into the kitchen.
Vanessa stood beside the island in her fitted white dress.
Frozen.
Guilty.
And on the floor beside her, near a large silver dog bowl, sat Lily.
His six-year-old daughter.
Barefoot.
May you like
Trembling.
With crumbs around her mouth and a small white bandage on her forehead.
