Chapter 1 Malicious Whispers

The Hampton breeze carried salt and dying summer heat through the canvas walls of the luxury tent.

Charlie Powell sat alone in an Adirondack chair by the fire pit, stirring her lukewarm hot cocoa with a bamboo stick. The marshmallows had dissolved into a sticky film on the surface. She checked her watch. Claudius had been gone for two hours, off to what he'd called "an urgent call with his partners" from the city.

Her iPhone sat on her knee, face down.

The screen lit up.

A chime pierced the crackling of dying embers.

Charlie picked up her phone. Unknown number. iMessage. No text-just a thumbnail image.

She tapped it.

The screen expanded to reveal a scanned document. It looked official, bearing a county seal in the corner. She squinted against the dim firelight and leaned in closer.

Clark County, Nevada.

Marriage Certificate

Her thumb stopped scrolling.

Groom: Claudius Buchanan.

Bride: Vivianne Mercer.

Charlie's breath caught. She read it again. The names hadn't changed. But the date was worse.

One year ago.

Three months before he'd rented Rockefeller Center-the ice rink, one thousand white roses. That proposal wasn't really a proposal; he'd simply knelt in the snow, called her his forever, and slid a ring onto her finger-one she'd believed meant something.

Her stomach churned.

Hot cocoa spilled onto her silk dress. She didn't feel it. Her hands trembled so violently that she had to grip her phone with both thumbs to steady the image. She zoomed in on the seal-on the signature-on those raised embossings, catching the light like a scar.

It's real.

This is real.

A wave of nausea rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, tasting the metallic tang of copper. Her fingers twitched across the screen, scrolling, zooming, searching for any misaligned pixels, for the telltale blurring of Photoshop tampering.

Nothing.

Footsteps crunched on gravel.

Male laughter, loud and loose with bourbon.

Charlie's head snapped up. Two figures emerged from the tree line, silhouetted against the distant glow of the main house. She knew those voices. Kael Erickson's braying drawl. Burk Bennett's smoker's rasp.

Claudius's inner circle.

Her body moved before her brain caught up. She slid from the chair, bare feet silent on the cool grass, and pressed herself into the thick shadow of an ancient oak. The bark scraped her shoulder blades through the thin silk.

The men stopped ten feet away.

Kael raised a crystal tumbler, amber liquid catching the firelight. "Claudius is still playing house with that Powell girl," he said, and laughed. "Poor bastard's been at it for a year."

Burk exhaled cigar smoke, a gray cloud drifting toward Charlie's hiding place. "Small price," he said. "You know why he's doing it."

"Corina." Kael's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper that carried perfectly in the still air. "Two years she humiliated him. Threw that pink diamond in the champagne tower. Called him-what was it?"

"Trash with a trust fund." Burk chuckled. "So he takes the little sister. Fucks her stupid. Makes her fall in love." He flicked ash into the fire pit. "Poetic, really."

Charlie bit her lower lip. Hard. Blood bloomed against her tongue, metallic and warm.

"Speaking of," Kael said, lowering his voice further. "Heard a rumor from the Hamptons set. Charlie's been sick in the mornings."

Burk's laugh turned ugly. "Don't worry. He's got it handled. That clinic on 73rd? The one his cousin runs? One phone call. Perfect little accident. She'll never even know she was pregnant."

The world tilted.

Charlie's back slid down the oak trunk until she crouched in the dirt, knees drawn to her chest. Her hands found her stomach, still flat, still secret. The night air turned to ice water in her lungs.

She remembered last night. Claudius's mouth on her abdomen, whispering about the future. His palm spread wide and possessive. The tenderness that had made her cry.

Now it made her want to scream.

A dry branch snapped beneath her heel.

The sound cracked like a gunshot.

Kael's head whipped toward the oak. His eyes narrowed, scanning the darkness. "You hear that?"

Charlie stopped breathing. Her pulse hammered in her ears so loud she was sure they could hear it. She pressed her hands harder against her belly, as if she could shield what might be growing there.

A cat shrieked from the underbrush.

Kael jumped. Burk cursed. "Fucking strays," he muttered. "Come on. Claudius is waiting."

They moved off, voices fading toward the main house.

Charlie didn't move for sixty seconds. She felt a scream clawing its way up her throat and swallowed it down, the effort making her eyes water. Her body wanted to collapse, to curl into a ball and weep until she was empty. But a cold, sharp thought cut through the panic: the baby. Her baby. The one they were talking about like a problem to be erased. The thought was a shard of ice in her gut, clearing the fog of terror. Then her lungs remembered how to work, and she gasped, sucking in air that tasted of smoke and her own terror. Sweat soaked through her dress, cold against her spine.