Chapter 1 - THE BAG BY THE DOOR
Claire Mercer had one hand on the front-door handle when Grant slammed the door shut over her shoulder.
The sound cracked through the pale, polished foyer of their Myers Park house.
Claire jerked her hand back.
Grant stood close enough that she could smell the coffee on his breath. His charcoal shirt was still perfectly tucked in, his dark-blond hair combed back the way it was every morning before he drove to his office in South End.
His eyes dropped to the overnight bag at Claire’s feet.
“Going somewhere?”
At thirty-one weeks pregnant, bending quickly had become awkward. Claire reached for the bag anyway.
Grant got there first.
“Grant.”
He lifted it onto the console.
“Trying to escape from me, sweetheart?” His mouth curved without warmth. “But I love you, baby.”
Then he unzipped the bag and turned it upside down.
A toothbrush. Two maternity shirts. Underwear. Prenatal vitamins. A paperback. A charger.
Everything scattered across the ivory tile.
Claire stood motionless.
That was why Grant missed the burgundy envelope sliding beneath the console.
Almost.
His attention went instead to her phone.
He picked it up.
Claire’s first instinct was to grab it back.
She stopped herself.
Grant noticed.
He always noticed resistance.
He swiped across the locked screen. “Password.”
“You know it.”
“Apparently I don’t know a lot of things.”
Claire looked past his shoes toward the thin burgundy edge beneath the console table.
Grant followed her eyes.
“Nothing on my phone is worth your time,” she said quietly.
His face changed.
Not dramatically. Grant was too disciplined for that.
His jaw tightened once.
Then he crouched.
“What the hell is this?”
He reached under the console and pulled out the envelope.
When he stood, his voice dropped.
“You spoiled, disobedient bitch. I paid good money to marry you, and this is how you repay me?”
Claire felt something inside her go strangely still.
He thought the envelope was the thing she had been protecting.
That was the point.
Grant tore it open.
Inside were three pages Claire had printed at the public library the previous afternoon.
A brochure from a family-law firm.
A list of nearby furnished apartments.
And a blank intake form.
Grant looked up.
“You hired a lawyer?”
Claire didn’t answer.
Behind him, hanging on the brass hook beside the door, was Claire’s cream maternity coat.
Inside its inner pocket rested another burgundy envelope.
Identical.
That one contained eighteen months of bank transfers.
Every one of them had gone to Claire’s mother.
Grant crushed the decoy envelope in his fist.
“You’re not leaving this house until we talk.”
Claire looked at the deadbolt.
Then at her husband.
Then at the overnight bag he had emptied across the floor.
May you like
For the first time, she understood that the question was no longer whether Grant would let her leave.
It was why her mother had apparently been helping him make sure she never tried.
