Chapter 3
Sloppy men hated being corrected by women they were trying to destroy.
Grant moved fast.
He grabbed Eve by the upper arm and yanked her up.
Pain flashed through her shoulder.
The room tilted.
Eve kept her hand on her belly and locked her knees.
“Sign,” he said.
“No.”
His grip tightened.
“Sign it.”
“No.”
Sloane stepped closer, voice low and urgent.
“Grant, stop. The charity luncheon starts in forty minutes. People are already arriving at the club.”
The Desert Ridge Country Club sat behind their mansion, separated only by a private walking path, a putting green, and a row of Italian cypress trees.
On any other Saturday, Eve would have been there already.
Smiling beside Grant.
Greeting donors.
Letting older women touch her stomach and say the same three things.
You’re glowing.
Any day now?
Grant must be thrilled.
Today’s event was supposed to raise money for neonatal care.
Eve had chosen the cause.
Grant had chosen the cameras.
Sloane had chosen to appear in the silent auction photos as if she were part of the family.
Eve looked at the clock over the wine fridge.
2:18 p.m.
Her father’s plane had landed in Phoenix at 1:06.
She knew because his assistant sent a one-line text.
Wheels down.
No explanation.
No heart emoji.
No softness.
Charles Hartwell did not do softness in writing.
But he did arrival.
And arrival meant everything.
Grant dragged Eve toward the kitchen island.
“Your father is not saving you,” he said.
Eve’s pulse stayed slow.
“Who said I called him?”
That landed.
Grant’s eyes flicked to the broken phone.
Then to the security camera.
Then to the windows.
For the first time all afternoon, he looked uncertain.
Sloane noticed too.
“Grant,” she whispered.
He shoved Eve into the barstool.
“Write your name.”
He threw a pen onto the folder.
Eve picked it up.
The pen was heavy.
Gold.
A Whitaker Ventures promotional pen, the kind Grant handed out at conferences to men who laughed too loudly and called women “girls” after three drinks.
Eve uncapped it.
Grant watched her hand.
Sloane watched Grant.
No one watched the housekeeper’s cart in the hallway.
Eve did.
Her housekeeper, Marta, was gone.
But her cleaning radio sat on the bottom shelf.
The red light was on.
Marta had heard something.
Or someone had told Marta to leave the radio open.
Eve signed nothing.
Instead, she wrote three words across the top of the first page.
UNDER DURESS. RECORDED.
Grant saw it one second too late.
He slapped the pen from her hand.
Sloane jumped.
Grant grabbed the page and tore it down the middle.
Then he raised the golf club.
This time, Eve knew he was not aiming near her.
The room shrank to silver metal and white knuckles.
A sound came from the hallway.
Not a shout.
Not a scream.
A door opening.
Then men’s dress shoes on marble.
One pair.
Two.
Three.
Grant stopped mid-swing.
Sloane turned.
May you like
Eve did not.
She knew that rhythm.
