Chapter 1 – THE SILVER BRACELET

The voice in the dark belonged to a woman whose grip was like iron.

She pulled me hard to the left, away from the spot where I had just been standing.

Another gunshot rang out.

The bullet struck the marble floor right where my chest had been a second earlier.

“Mom!” Anthony’s voice cracked in the pitch-black ballroom.

“I’m here!” I screamed, lunging blindly toward the sound of my son.

The stranger caught my wrist again.

“We don’t have time,” the woman whispered sharply. “Dominic is moving toward your son right now. Take this.”

She pressed a heavy, cold object into my palm.

I traced the metal with my fingers.

It was a thick silver bracelet.

My mother’s silver bracelet.

The one she was wearing the night she died in that sudden, unexplained house fire three years ago.

“Put it on,” the woman ordered. “When the emergency lights kick in, Vincent’s men will look for the woman without jewelry. Claire made sure of it.”

I slipped it over my wrist just as the backup generators hummed to life.

Dim, amber light flooded the room.

Chaos erupted.

Guests were screaming, diving under tables.

But I only looked for one person.

Anthony.

He was pressed against the far wall, his hands raised.

Dominic was standing three feet away from him, his gun leveled directly at my seventeen-year-old son’s chest.

Vincent was nowhere to be seen.

And Claire was standing near the exit, holding Vincent’s arm, watching my son with a cold, satisfied smile.

“Vincent!” I screamed. “Stop him!”

His eyes flickered to Dominic. Then to Anthony.

And then he turned away.

He walked out the door with my sister.

My heart completely stopped.

He was choosing her. He was leaving our son to die to cover his own tracks.

“No!” I lunged forward.

But before Dominic could pull the trigger, the stranger beside me moved.

She didn’t fire a gun.

She threw a heavy glass vase directly into the chandelier above Dominic’s head.

Glass rained down. Dominic shielded his face, his shot going wide, shattering a mirror behind Anthony.

“Run, kid!” the woman yelled.

Anthony didn’t hesitate. He sprinted toward the kitchen corridors.

“Go,” the woman told me, pushing me toward the side exit. “There’s a black sedan in the alley. The driver has a red coat.”

“Who are you?” I demanded, my chest heaving.

“My name is Rosa,” she said, pulling a weapon from her jacket. “And your mother isn’t dead.”

I froze.

“What?”

“She survived the fire,” Rosa said, her eyes scanning the room. “And she’s been building an army to destroy Vincent Moretti ever since.”

Before I could process the words, the ballroom doors blew open.

Men in tactical gear poured in. Not FBI.

These men wore no badges.

Rosa shoved me hard.

“Get to the car, Evelyn! Now!”

I ran.

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