Chapter 3
I woke up at dawn.
Mia was curled up on the edge of her bed, her hand dangling down, her fingers tangled in my hair.
Lily was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, watching me.
She didn’t say anything.
Just watched.
I sat up, careful not to wake Mia.
“Hey, bug,” I said, soft. “You okay?”
She nodded.
But her eyes were red.
I stood up, sat on the edge of her bed.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded again.
I took a breath.
“Did Olivia ever hurt you? Like… hit you? Or yell really bad?”
Lily looked down at her hands.
She picked at a loose thread on her pajama pants.
“Sometimes she yelled,” she said, quiet. “When we asked for food. Or when we cried for you.”
My chest ached.
“What else, baby?”
“She locked us in our rooms once,” she whispered. “For the whole day. Because Mia spilled juice on her new shoes. She said we had to learn to be more careful.”
I felt sick.
“Did she feed you that day?”
Lily shook her head.
“Only when you came home that night. She made us pretend we’d eaten all day. She said if we told you, you’d leave and never come back.”
I pulled her into my arms.
She stiffened for a second, then relaxed, crying into my shirt.
“I was so scared, Daddy,” she sobbed. “I thought you’d never believe us. I thought you loved her more than us.”
My heart broke into a million pieces.
“Never,” I said, my voice breaking. “Never, ever. You and Mia are the most important things in the whole world. I love you more than anything. More than work. More than money. More than Olivia. More than anything.”
I held her until she stopped crying.
Then I called my sister Sarah.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Daniel? It’s six in the morning. Is everything okay?”
“Can you come over?” I said. “Please. I need you.”
I didn’t have to say anything else.
Sarah was the only person who’d never liked Olivia.
She’d told me three days after the wedding that Olivia was a gold digger, that she only cared about my money, that she’d hurt the girls.
I’d told her she was being paranoid.
Stupid.
So stupid.
She was at my door forty minutes later.
She took one look at my face, at the girls huddled behind me on the couch, and her jaw set.
“What did that bitch do?”
I told her everything.
The moldy bread.
The spending spree.
The life insurance policy.
The girls being locked in their rooms.
Sarah’s face got whiter and whiter as I talked.
When I finished, she didn’t say anything.
She just walked over to the couch, sat down, and pulled both girls into her lap.
She held them for a long time.
Then she looked up at me, her eyes hard.
“I’m moving in,” she said. “At least for a few months. You’re not going through this alone. And those girls are never going to be alone with anyone I don’t trust again.”
I almost cried.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” she said, kissing the top of Mia’s head. “I should have done more. I should have made you see her for what she was sooner.”
That afternoon, Mark came back.
He had a thick stack of papers with him.
Divorce papers.
Emergency custody petition.
Temporary restraining order application.
“All the evidence is solid,” he said, spreading the papers out on my kitchen table. “The moldy bread. The credit card statements—$127,000 in two weeks, Daniel. Not a single charge for groceries, or kids’ clothes, or anything for the girls. The life insurance policy is definitely forged—we’ll run the signature forensics, but I’d bet my license it’s not yours. The cops already have Olivia and Chloe in holding. They’re being arraigned tomorrow.”
He paused.
“The DA is looking at the insurance policy. He’s thinking conspiracy to commit fraud. Maybe more, depending on what they find on their phones.”
“More?”
“Conspiracy to commit murder,” Mark said, quiet. “If there’s any evidence they were planning to act on that policy.”
My blood ran cold.
I looked over at the girls.
They were in the living room, building a block tower with Sarah.
Laughing.
For the first time all day.
May you like
“Whatever it takes,” I said. “I want her gone. I want her to never be able to come near my girls again. Ever.”
“Consider it done,” Mark said.
