Chapter 1 - THE MAN OUTSIDE THE BROKEN DOORBy the time Derek broke through the bathroom door, my left arm no longer looked like part of me.
It hung against my red satin dress at an angle that made my stomach turn.
Blood from a cut near my elbow had soaked through the towel I had wrapped around it, but the fracture was worse than the blood.
I sat against the cold marble wall with my phone pressed to my ear.
Derek stood in the doorway holding a whiskey glass.
“Nobody saves trash.”
His voice was thick from bourbon.
Twenty minutes earlier, we had been arguing in the kitchen.
Ten minutes earlier, he had twisted my arm behind me because I tried to take my phone back.
Then I heard the crack.
I made it into the bathroom and locked the door.
He laughed while I called the one number my mother had made me memorize before she died.
I hadn’t used it in seventeen years.
Derek kicked the damaged door wider.
“Hang up, parasite.”
He grabbed my injured arm.
Pain exploded through my shoulder.
I screamed as he dragged me across the marble.
My phone struck the floor but stayed connected.
Then I saw movement behind Derek.
Two men were coming down the hallway.
The first wore a dark tailored suit.
Forty-five.
Broad shoulders.
Short dark hair.
A face I recognized from photographs my mother used to hide inside an old cookbook.
Vincent Moretti.
The man newspapers called a businessman when lawyers were present and something very different when they weren’t.
My mother’s younger brother.
My uncle.
The man she spent most of my childhood teaching me never to need.
Derek swatted toward the phone again.
I shoved him with my good hand.
He stumbled backward.
“He’s already here.”
Derek turned.
Whatever alcohol had done to his face disappeared instantly.
Vincent stopped several feet away.
One silent bodyguard remained behind him.
He did not draw a weapon.
He did not hit Derek.
He simply looked at my husband’s hand wrapped around my broken arm.
“Touch her again.”
Derek released me.
The whiskey glass shook between his fingers.
Vincent stepped past him and crouched beside me.
For seventeen years, I had imagined what I would say if I ever saw him again.
You ruined my mother’s life.
Stay away from me.
I’m nothing like you.
Instead I whispered:
“My arm.”
“I know.”
His voice was softer than I expected.
He took off his jacket and carefully placed it around my shoulders without touching the injury.
Then he looked toward the bodyguard.
“Ambulance?”
“Already downstairs.”
Derek suddenly found his voice.
“You can’t just come into my home.”
Vincent stood.
He looked around the Manhattan penthouse.
Then back at Derek.
“No.”
His expression remained completely controlled.
“But the police can.”
Sirens rose from the street below.
Derek stared at me.
“You called the cops?”
Vincent answered before I could.
“I did.”
That was the first surprise.
The most feared man I knew had not come upstairs to punish my husband.
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He had come to make sure I lived long enough to tell the truth myself.
And judging by Derek’s face, he was afraid of far more than an assault charge.
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