Chapter 1 - THE NOTE IN MY HAND
At 10:00 p.m., I was crouched behind a brick wall near the rear storage shed of the Kessler estate in Highland Park, Illinois, trying not to breathe too loudly.
Through a crack in the wooden shutter, I saw Clara on her knees on the concrete floor. The cheap bowl in front of her held cold rice drowned in tap water. Her gray sweatshirt hung off her like it belonged to someone twice her size. Evelyn stood over her with a thin wooden rod in one hand. Across from them, Marcus sat in a chair, one ankle resting on his knee, calmly smoking a cigar.
“Don’t you dare go near Danielle again,” he said, his tone almost bored. “She’s our only leverage to clear the corporate debt.”
My fingers tightened around my phone.
Evelyn lifted the rod again. “Once Danielle signs the management merger, her company’s liquid assets belong to this family. Then she’ll learn her place, exactly like you did.”
Marcus laughed softly. “Danielle trusts me completely. As soon as we say ‘I do,’ I’ll control her accounts.”
The man I had agreed to marry in six weeks was sitting there like a banker discussing a routine transaction, while his mother terrorized the woman they called family.
I backed away from the shed one slow step at a time, my phone still recording.
I was not going to marry Marcus Kessler.
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But I also was not going to call off the wedding that night.
Because if I disappeared too quickly, they would hide everything. And after seeing Clara’s face, I knew two things with absolute certainty: she had risked herself to warn me, and the next move had to be mine.
