Chapter 1 - BEHIND THE SLATS
Damon’s fingers dug into my upper arm hard enough to make my hand open.
The cream cashmere blanket slipped from my grip just as he yanked me across the stone patio and shoved my eight-month-pregnant body through the cedar kennel door.
“SLEEP WHERE YOU BELONG.”
My knee hit the wooden floor.
Pain shot through my hip, but terror hit harder.
I wrapped both arms around my belly.
“Please,” I gasped. “The baby.”
Damon slammed the door.
The latch struck wood with a metallic crack.
For one second, all I could see through the slats was my husband’s white shirt and the polished toes of his shoes.
Then Lacey stepped into view behind him.
My silk robe hung from her shoulders.
My robe.
Her bare fingers curled around one of my crystal wine glasses as if she had already moved into the life Damon was trying to push me out of.
I gripped the wooden slats.
“You’re insane.”
Damon crouched until our faces were level.
“No, Claire. I’m finally done negotiating.”
The baby moved beneath my palm.
I swallowed a cry.
Then the garden gate clicked.
Damon straightened.
Lacey turned.
My father walked onto the patio carrying a dark travel bag.
Charles Bennett had been scheduled to remain in London for another six days.
For one impossible heartbeat, nobody moved.
Dad saw me.
His travel bag dropped.
“Dad…”
His face changed.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
He crossed the patio so fast Lacey barely managed to step aside.
“Open it,” he told Damon.
Damon lifted both hands. “Charles, she’s hysterical.”
Dad’s eyes flicked to my scraped knee, my shaking hands, then my stomach.
“Open. It.”
Damon reached for him.
Dad knocked his hand aside and slapped him so hard Damon staggered into the kennel door.
The latch hadn’t caught fully.
The door swung open.
Dad pulled me out, positioned me behind him, then grabbed Damon by the shirt when he lunged forward.
One hard turn.
One shove.
Damon crashed into the kennel.
Dad slammed the door and latched it.
“Now you know your place.”
Lacey’s wine glass trembled.
I should have felt safe.
Instead, Damon stopped fighting the bars and smiled at me.
“Ask him,” he said quietly.
Dad went still.
“Ask your father why he came home early.”
I looked at Dad.
His jaw tightened.
He picked up his travel bag and unzipped the front compartment.
“I came home,” he said, “because somebody moved nine hundred thousand dollars out of an account that only you were supposed to authorize.”
My stomach seemed to drop beneath the baby.
“I didn’t authorize anything.”
Dad pulled out a printed bank alert.
At the bottom was a signature.
Mine.
May you like
Except I had never signed it.
📖 I thought my father had interrupted one act of cruelty, but the forged signature meant Damon had been preparing something far bigger than humiliation. 👇
