“Your daughter ruined my dress!”

Chloe’s hand was already moving when I entered the foyer.

The slap cracked across the marble hall.

Lily’s head snapped sideways. Two tiny white shapes flew from her mouth, struck the polished floor, and bounced beneath the console table.

For one second, my daughter made no sound.

She stood in her pale-blue dress with one hand raised toward her face. Blood gathered between her lips, bright against skin that had gone almost colorless.

Chloe stared at a dark streak across the front of her ivory dress.

“Your daughter ruined my dress!”

Her voice rose shrill and furious beneath the crystal chandelier.

Lily began crying.

I crossed the foyer so quickly that one of my shoes came loose. I dropped to my knees, wiped blood from her chin with my sleeve, and pulled her against me.

“What happened?”

“I bumped her,” Lily sobbed. “I said sorry.”

Chloe pointed at a faint smear of berry juice near her waist.

“She ran straight into me.”

“You knocked out her teeth.”

“They were baby teeth.”

The sentence was so calm that I looked at Julian.

My husband stood three steps away beside the staircase. His tailored suit was immaculate. He adjusted one silver cuff link, then the other, as though the only disorder in the room was a crooked sleeve.

“Julian.”

He met my eyes.

“Control your child. Or put a leash on it.”

Something cold moved through me.

Not shock.

Recognition.

Lily pressed her face into my neck.

I wrapped both arms around her.

“It’s over, sweetheart. No one will ever hurt you again.”

Eleanor Sterling entered from the drawing room wearing the expression she used whenever another person’s pain inconvenienced her.

“She has always been dramatic,” she said. “Give Chloe an apology and end this embarrassment.”

“Lily apologized before Chloe hit her.”

Eleanor stepped toward me.

“You have filled that child with your insolence.”

Her hand rose.

I caught her wrist before it reached my face.

Julian moved instantly then.

Not when Chloe struck Lily.

Not when blood crossed the floor.

When I stopped his mother.

His fists clenched.

“Let her go.”

I stood with Lily on one hip and Eleanor’s wrist in my hand.

“Lower your hand, Julian.”

His gaze flicked toward the two security cameras above the foyer arch.

That glance told me everything I needed to know.

Someone wanted this recorded.

I released Eleanor.

Then I reached for the red string bracelet around my wrist.

My mother had tied the first one there when I was twenty-two.

If you ever decide you need us, break the red line yourself.

I had replaced the faded string every year, though my mother had been dead for eight of them.

I snapped it.

Julian’s face changed.

He knew what the bracelet meant.

That surprised me more than the fear in his eyes.

I carried Lily beneath the staircase and knelt beside the third floorboard from the wall. My fingernails found the shallow groove Arthur had shown me six years earlier, before I moved into the Sterling mansion.

The board lifted.

Inside lay a black satellite phone wrapped in waterproof cloth.

Eleanor took one step backward.

Chloe stopped touching her dress.

Julian said my name softly.

“Victoria, don’t.”

I switched on the phone.

It connected in four seconds.

Arthur Bell answered without greeting.

“Red line?”

“Yes.”

“Are you injured?”