Chapter 1
“Please punish me instead.”
Claire Whitmore dropped to her knees before anyone could stop her.
Her three-year-old daughter had disappeared from the staff room thirty minutes earlier.
Now Lily was inside the one room nobody at Crowe Manor entered without permission.
Nathaniel Crowe’s private office.
Even his armed guards waited outside.
And both of them looked terrified.
Claire pushed through the half-open walnut door expecting to hear her daughter crying.
What she saw made her stop breathing.
Nathaniel Crowe, the most feared man she had ever worked for, was asleep on the black leather sofa.
A gray blanket covered his shoulders.
And curled against his chest was Lily.
Her tiny hand still clutched his white shirt.
Her old blue storybook lay open beside them.
Claire whispered her daughter’s name.
Lily opened her green eyes and smiled.
“Mommy.”
Nathaniel woke a second later.
His gaze snapped toward Claire.
Then toward the child sleeping against him.
Claire immediately saw the outline of a handgun beneath the sofa cushion.
She stepped forward.
“Mr. Crowe, I’m sorry.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
“She wasn’t supposed to leave the staff room.”
Still nothing.
Then Lily sat up and pointed at him.
“He was tired, Mommy.”
Claire stared at her.
“So I covered him.”
Nathaniel slowly looked at the crooked blanket.
For the first time since Claire had begun working at the mansion, she saw something on his face she had never expected.
Confusion.
Then Lily added something much worse.
“He had a bad dream.”
Nathaniel’s eyes hardened.
“What did I say?”
Lily thought for a moment.
“Emily.”
The guard behind Claire suddenly stopped moving.
Nathaniel went completely still.
Claire knew that name.
Everyone in the mansion did.
Emily Crowe had been Nathaniel’s younger sister.
She had died three years earlier in what everyone called a tragic car accident.
She had also been pregnant.
Nobody spoke about her.
Nobody touched her belongings.
And Nathaniel had kept this office practically sealed since her death.
Claire grabbed Lily’s hand.
“We should leave.”
Then the storybook slipped from Lily’s lap.
It hit the floor.
A folded yellow piece of paper slid from behind the back cover.
Nathaniel reached it before Claire could.
The moment he saw the handwriting, all the color left his face.
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“What is it?”
Nathaniel unfolded the note.
He read it once.
Then again.
Then he looked directly at Claire.
“Where did Lily get this book?”
“It belonged to my husband.”
Nathaniel’s expression changed instantly.
“Your husband is dead.”
Claire swallowed.
“Two years.”
“What was his name?”
“Daniel Whitmore.”
Behind her, one of the guards quietly cursed.
Claire turned.
“Why did you react like that?”
Nobody answered.
Nathaniel placed the note under the brass desk lamp.
Claire stepped closer.
Eleven handwritten words stared back at her.
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, TAKE THE BOOK TO NATHANIEL CROWE.
D.W.
Claire stopped breathing.
She knew that handwriting.
Daniel’s.
Her dead husband had somehow known Nathaniel Crowe.
And he had never told her.
But that wasn’t the strangest part.
Nathaniel opened a locked desk drawer and pulled out an old photograph.
Claire’s knees nearly gave out.
Daniel was standing beside Emily Crowe.
The picture had been taken less than one month before Emily died.
Claire whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Then someone knocked on the office door.
Nathaniel instantly covered the note.
His cousin Grant Crowe walked in smiling.
But the moment Grant saw Lily’s blue storybook, his smile vanished.
Only for a second.
Claire saw it.
Nathaniel saw it too.
Grant quickly recovered.
“Everything all right?”
Before Nathaniel could answer, Lily pointed at Grant’s black signet ring.
“Daddy had one like that.”
Claire slowly turned toward her daughter.
“No, sweetheart.”
“Daddy never owned a ring like that.”
Lily frowned.
“Yes, he did.”
“In the secret box.”
Grant stopped breathing.
And Nathaniel quietly locked the office door.
That was when Claire realized the most terrifying possibility.
Her daughter had not simply wandered into the wrong room.
Someone may have been waiting for that book to enter the mansion.
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And when Nathaniel finally cut open its hidden spine, something tiny dropped onto his desk that made even the armed guard step backward.
But the real shock came when they discovered who had secretly arranged for Claire to work at Crowe Manor almost a year earlier.
