idor and pushed open the cheap wooden door to

er tracks. Her hand f

d been gutt

d sweaters, worn jeans, a single thrift-store dress-had been yanked from their hangers and strewn carelessly across the floor like tr

yal attack dog. In Brenda's hands, cradled with deliberate, mocking reverence, was a delicate, intri

Cynthia had left of he

lummet, the air turning sharp and brittle as winter ice. Her dark eyes locked

like a drumroll before an execution. Her aunt strolled through the open doorway, her posture la

anicured hand toward the statue nestled in Brenda's arms. Her

of mint and black tea. "You will go to the Church family tomorrow morning and call off this ridiculous engagement. You will tell Eleonora that you are unfit, that you lied,

speak. Her breathing staye

er aunt's nose, "I will take a hammer to that piece of junk. I'll smash it to splinters right in fro

g. She expected Cynthia to collapse to he

y stare-the flat, dead eyes of someone who had nothing left to lose-made Inger's body react before her bra

" Cynthia said, her voice eerily calm, soft as a prayer and sharp as a bl

verything under this roof-every stick of furniture, every scrap of fabric, every worthless trinket you cling to-belongs to me. I can smash that

wly, terrifyingly, the rigid, furious line of her mouth curved upwa

her's memory. The anger threatened to blind her, to consume her, to make her do something irreversible. But the moment she caught the triumphant, gloating smile stretching acr

ket of her jeans. Her thumb found the

ped the

he phone's speaker-tinny but

l take a hammer to t

f belongs to me! I can sma

ing but a parasi

ace so fast it looked like a special effect-from flushed pink to corpse-gray in the space of a heartbea

ike glass. She lunged forward, her manicured claws outstre

ed it sharply at the joint-just enough to send a bolt of pain shooting up her forearm-and shoved her backward with controlled, contemptuous

ethal, barely audible whisper. "Extortion. Grand larceny. Blackmail. I wonder how the NYPD would handle this evidence. Or better yet..." She tilted her head, her smile turning razor-sharp. "Th

The threat of public humiliation-of being dragged through the tabloid mud-was a knife pressed directly against h

h Brenda, who was shaking like a leaf in a hurrica

ommanded. Her voice was

o place it gently, reverently, on the nightstand. She b

a hissed, the wor

pinned. She shot Cynthia a look of pure, venomous, undiluted hatred-a promise of future retribution-but

th both hands, cradling it against her chest. Her thumb gently, tenderly brushed away a single speck of dust from the carved face. For

ile to an encrypted cloud server with triple redundancy. The war in t