Spencer and Constance had mistakenly assumed they had married into a quiet, compliant, grieving family. They hadn’t realized they had just declared a blood war on an apex predator who had spent thirty-two years hunting their exact species.
I gently reached down to adjust Madeline’s collar. As her long sleeve rode up her forearm, my breath hitched. Beneath the fabric, blooming across her pale skin, was a horrific tapestry of fading bruises. Purple, sickly yellow, and deep green. Finger marks. Defensive wounds.
This dinner wasn’t the beginning of the nightmare. It was just the first time he was arrogant enough to let the monster out in front of me.
Chapter 2: The Midnight Ledger
The apartment was eerily silent now, save for the muffled, invasive whispers of wealthy neighbors gathering in the hallway. The dinner had congealed on the fine china. The single candle on William’s birthday cake remained unlit. My husband should have been standing beside me, a shield for his little girl. But he was buried in the earth, which meant tonight, I had to carry the crushing weight of my grief and the explosive, radioactive core of his posthumous fury.
I stroked Madeline’s damp hair. “Look at me, baby.”
She couldn’t. Her eyes were superglued to the marble floor where she had fallen, as if the cold stone was the only thing absorbing her suffocating shame.
I slipped my fingers under her chin and applied gentle upward pressure. “No,” I commanded softly. “You do not look down. Not tonight. Not ever again.”
