Chapter 1 - The Trophy at the Fireplace

Vanessa swung Claire’s crystal trophy with both hands.

The edge of the heavy base struck Claire high in the shoulder and side of the head, spinning her down beside the marble fireplace so hard that one heel flew off and slid beneath a velvet chair.

“Stay down,” Vanessa snapped, breathing hard in her black evening gown. “Your husband and I need you helpless long enough to steal everything.”

Claire did not answer.

For one suspended second, she heard only the ringing in her ear and the crackle of the dying fire. The trophy rolled from Vanessa’s hand and stopped near Claire’s hip, its engraved face turned toward the ceiling.

Daniel crouched over her almost immediately.

His tuxedo jacket brushed the rug as he gripped her jaw, turning her face toward the light with clinical coldness.

“By tomorrow,” he said, glancing at Vanessa, “she’ll be too confused to stop us.”

Then he kissed Vanessa directly above Claire’s body.

The kiss was not hurried. That was what made it monstrous.

Claire kept her eyes closed.

Vanessa wiped the trophy with her shawl, removing any obvious prints, then kicked it toward the hearth.

“Then we blame her and take the accounts.”

Daniel grabbed Claire’s limp hand, pressed her thumb against her phone, and swore when the screen refused to unlock. He tried again, harder this time, then flung the phone onto the rug.

“Face ID and thumb lock both failed,” he muttered. “She must’ve changed the settings.”

Vanessa gave a sharp, angry laugh. “Then we do it the slow way.”

Together they moved toward the hallway.

“When she wakes up,” Daniel said, “we’ll already own her life.”

Their laughter faded.

Claire opened her eyes.

Pain rushed in all at once—through her shoulder, along her scalp, through the side of her neck. She reached for the trophy to steady herself.

That was when she saw it.

Inside the cut-crystal base, nearly invisible unless the piece was tilted just right, a tiny transmitter light blinked twice.

Claire went completely still.

The trophy had not only recorded everything.

It had already sent it.

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The attack, the affair, the plan, the attempt to use her phone—everything was on its way to the two people she trusted most outside the house.

And somewhere beyond the hallway, Daniel’s laughter stopped so suddenly that Claire knew he had realized something was wrong.