Chapter 1 - THE SHOVE
Marcus’s hand hit my shoulder so hard my camera strap snapped against my collarbone.
One second I was gripping the second-floor balcony railing with my professional camera in my right hand, staring at the courtyard below. The next, my brother drove both hands into me and shoved me straight over the stone edge.
I remember the sky tipping.
I remember the pale blue skirt of my dress flying around my legs.
I remember Marcus leaning over the railing and shouting down at me, “The fortune is mine!”
Then I hit the courtyard.
Pain burst through my hip and shoulder so violently that for half a second I couldn’t even scream. My camera struck the stone beside me and shattered. Glass cracked. Metal snapped. Something inside it rattled loose.
I tasted blood.
I was dazed, but conscious.
I turned my head and saw pieces of my lens lying on the courtyard stones like ice.
Above me, Marcus stared down from the balcony. A second later Eleanor stepped beside him in her cream dress and pearls, one manicured hand catching his sleeve.
I heard running footsteps.
Daniel Reed—the calm photographer my mother had hired for the estate announcement—rushed to me and dropped to one knee. He smelled faintly of aftershave and sun-warmed cotton. His photographer vest swung open as he crouched.
“Claire,” he said sharply. “Stay with me. Can you move your legs?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t sit up yet.”
Above us, Eleanor looked down without a flicker of panic. She pulled Marcus slightly back from the railing and said, cold and clear, “No one must know what you’ve done.”
Daniel heard it too.
I saw the exact second his expression changed.
The soft, harmless event photographer disappeared. Something colder moved into his face.
He slipped an arm behind my shoulders and started guiding me away from the spot beneath the balcony.
“Move,” he said under his breath. “Now.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re coming down.”
I heard the outdoor staircase door slam open.
Marcus and Eleanor hurried down toward the courtyard. Marcus pointed at Daniel before his shoes even hit the last step.
“Get off my property—now!”
Daniel stepped in front of me.
Marcus came closer, breathing hard, his face flushed with rage and something uglier—fear.
Then Daniel grabbed the hem of his photographer vest and ripped it off in one fast motion.
Underneath was a black FBI tactical vest.
A body camera blinked on his chest.
Marcus froze.
Eleanor’s face emptied.
Daniel planted himself between them and me, raised a federal badge, and said in a voice so flat it was almost cruel, “FBI. I recorded the whole incident.”
My brother went pale.
My mother actually recoiled.
I looked from Daniel’s badge to the body camera on his chest, then back to Marcus’s face, and in that moment I knew two things at once.
My brother had just tried to kill me.
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And whatever was wrong inside my family had already been big enough for the FBI to be watching us.
📖 I survived the fall, but when Daniel pulled me to safety, I realized proving attempted murder would be harder than surviving it. 👇
