Chapter 1
"""I came home six hours early with a loaded gun under my coat and blood drying on my cuff, only to discover the housekeeper laughing with my three daughters, children who hadn’t spoken since their mother was murdered fourteen months earlier. Then one of them saw me, stopped singing, and whispered something that turned my own mansion into the most dangerous place I’d ever entered.
My name is Dominic Romano.
In New York, men knew better than to make me repeat myself. I controlled freight routes, private clubs, gambling rooms, warehouses, and enough powerful people to make problems disappear.
But there was one thing all my money and influence couldn’t fix.
My daughters.
Olivia, Sophie, and Nora had been silent since their mother, Isabelle, was murdered outside their preschool in Garden City.
No crying.
No screaming.
Not even “Daddy.”
I hired specialists from Manhattan to California. I bought puppies, ponies, toys, vacations, anything I thought might bring them back.
Nothing did.
Until that afternoon.
I stepped into the foyer and heard laughter coming from the kitchen.
Then singing.
“You Are My Sunshine.”
For a second, I thought I was losing my mind.
I followed those tiny voices down the hallway, passing Isabelle’s portrait, until I reached the kitchen doorway.
And froze.
Olivia sat on the table, swinging her legs.
Sophie stood on a chair wearing an apron twice her size.
Nora was riding on the shoulders of Grace Bennett, the young housekeeper I’d hired two months earlier and barely noticed.
They were singing.
My daughters were singing.
Nora laughed and tugged Grace’s hair.
“Louder, Miss Grace!”
Her voice hit me harder than any bullet ever had.
I should’ve been grateful.
Instead, jealousy burned through me.
Grace had accomplished what doctors, therapists, money, and their own father couldn’t.
She had made them feel safe.
Then my briefcase slipped from my hand.
It crashed against the marble.
Silence.
The girls turned toward me, and every trace of happiness vanished.
Nora scrambled down and hid behind Grace.
My own daughter was hiding from me.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.
Grace stiffened.
Sophie clutched her hand and whispered something into her ear.
I saw the blood drain from Grace’s face.
“What did she say?”
Grace looked toward the hallway as if someone might be listening.
Then she stepped closer.
“She said the man who killed their mother is still inside this house.”
My hand went beneath my coat.
For fourteen months, I’d been hunting Isabelle’s killer across New York.
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I’d never once considered that every night, I might have been locking my daughters inside with him.
The story is too long to fit in the caption.
