My name is Maya Vance, and for twenty-eight years, I was the ghost in my own family’s mansion. But right now, inside this mahogany-paneled boardroom on the top floor of Vance Enterprises in downtown Chicago, the ghost is about to be exorcised—or executed. My older half-brothers, Julian and Pierce, are staring at me with predatory eyes. Julian, the oldest,...
My name is Logan Vance, a former Chicago PD tactical officer now running private security for high-profile assets. I live by a simple rule: never trust a quiet room. Right now, that rule is the only thing keeping me alive.
The brass key card buzzed red against the reader of penthouse 4B. The door didn’t just open; it was kicked...
PART 2
Detective Mendes ordered Derek to sit while the evidence officer photographed his boot.
“What did Helen find?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
My mother tried to answer, but pain folded her forward. The paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher. Derek moved toward her.
“I should ride with my wife’s mother.”
I blocked him.
“You should stay exactly where the detective told you.”
His face...
My name is Maya Vance. On my eighteenth birthday, my stepfather threw me out onto the rain-slicked streets of Blackwood Valley with nothing but forty-seven dollars and a bruised jaw. I didn’t cry; I survived. I used eight dollars and thirty-two cents of that meager cash at a backroom tax-delinquency auction to buy the deed to the ruined, nineteenth-century...
My 18th birthday didn’t end with cake; it ended with my stepfather’s heavy work boot slamming into my ribs, throwing me onto the rain-slicked concrete of South Side Chicago. "Get the hell out, Maya," he spat, tossing a damp duffel bag onto my chest. I had exactly forty-seven dollars in my pocket and a bruised collarbone. Fast forward three...
My fingers clamped around the two-star admiral's wrist with enough force to grind bone against bone. Marcus Harwell gasped, his face draining of color as he tried—and utterly failed—to yank his arm free. Thirty seconds ago, he had backhanded me across the face so hard I tasted copper. Now, with his hand caught mid-air on his second attempt, he...
Part 1: The Silver Shatter
My name is Grace Whitman. For six years, I was Mrs. Preston Caldwell, the perfectly manicured, quiet ornament to a Greenwich, Connecticut venture capitalist. But tonight, that ornament shattered.
The heavy, solid silver polo trophy was midair, spinning directly toward my face, before I even realized I couldn't duck fast enough. Seven months pregnant, standing in...
Part 1: The Silver Shatter
My name is Grace Whitman. For six years, I was Mrs. Preston Caldwell, the perfectly manicured, quiet ornament to a Greenwich, Connecticut venture capitalist. But tonight, that ornament shattered.
The heavy, solid silver polo trophy was midair, spinning directly toward my face, before I even realized I couldn't duck fast enough. Seven months pregnant, standing in...
Part 1
The sting on my left cheek was nothing compared to the cold terror gripping my stomach. Six months pregnant, kneeling on the freezing marble floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the blinding flashbulbs of five hundred Manhattan elites, I looked up at my husband. Marcus Ashford, the billionaire tech magnate, stood over me, his eyes wild...
Part 1
The cold steel of the steering wheel was the only thing keeping my hands from shaking. My name is Clara Vance, and three minutes ago, I was just a forensic accountant at a mid-sized firm in Boston. Now, I am a woman running for her life. The rain was drumming against the windshield of my SUV like a...
