Chapter One: The Woman Who Should Have Died
The first thing Ava Monroe heard was the ocean.
Not the police radios. Not the sirens. Not the officer shouting for an ambulance.
The ocean.
It rolled beyond the glass walls of the mansion, calm and endless, as if nothing terrible had happened inside the room overlooking it.
Ava lay on the Persian rug, her ivory blouse soaked red, her body cold against the floor. She could feel hands near her neck, searching for a pulse. She could hear a man breathing too fast somewhere behind her.
“Daniel Reed,” an officer said sharply. “You are under arrest.”
“No,” Daniel choked. “I didn’t do this. I found her like that.”
Metal clicked.
Handcuffs.
Ava forced her eyelids open.
The room froze.
Across the living room, Evelyn Whitmore stood in her white tailored suit, one hand pressed against her pearl necklace. For a woman who had built an empire on perfect control, fear looked foreign on her face.
Ava turned her head slowly.
Her eyes locked on Evelyn.
Evelyn whispered, “No... That’s impossible.”
Ava’s voice came out weak, but every word cut through the room.
“I am the evidence.”
Then everything went black.
When Ava woke again, she was in a hospital room with two police officers outside the door and Daniel sitting in a chair beside her bed, still wearing the same khaki shirt.
His wrists were no longer cuffed.
His eyes were red.
“You’re alive,” he whispered.
Ava stared at the ceiling.
“I was supposed to be dead.”
Daniel leaned closer. “Ava, who did this?”
She swallowed against the pain in her throat.
“Evelyn.”
Daniel went still.
Evelyn Whitmore was not just an elderly socialite. She was Ava’s employer, mentor, and the richest widow on the California coast.
She was also Daniel’s grandmother.
And she had spent the last six months pretending to love Ava like family.
Daniel shook his head slowly. “Why would she try to kill you?”
May you like
Ava turned toward him.
“Because I found out what happened to your mother.”
