Chapter 1
The mud was cold against my cheek, but my daughter was warm against my chest, breathing in tiny, furious squeaks like she refused to let the world defeat her. I had just dragged myself three yards from the porch when Grant’s boot came down beside my ribs and his shadow swallowed us whole.
“Still crawling, Maren?” he laughed.
Rain hammered the driveway of the farmhouse I had once helped save from foreclosure. My C-section wound had torn open after Grant shoved me out the back door, six days postpartum, because his new wife, Celeste, wanted “the weak ex” gone before his parents came home from church.
I held my premature daughter, Lily, under my coat with one arm. With the other, I pressed a towel against my abdomen and kept moving.
Grant stepped in front of me.
“You don’t get to leave with my child,” he said.
“She was born early because you delayed the ambulance,” I whispered.
His lip curled. “Because you were being dramatic.”
Behind him, Celeste’s perfume still floated from the doorway—expensive roses and cruelty. She had smiled while Grant packed my hospital bag into a trash bag and tossed it into the rain.
“Your parents will know,” I said.
He grinned. “My parents adore Celeste. She cooks. She listens. She respects family.”
Then he planted his heavy boot squarely onto my fresh stitches.
Pain flashed white through my skull, but I swallowed the scream. Lily whimpered. That sound kept me alive.
Grant leaned down, his face bright with victory.
“Die in the dirt, you weak cow,” he hissed. “My new wife is a real woman who actually demands respect for my parents.”
I looked past him, toward the storm-dark road.
“You should answer your phone.”
He laughed harder. “Still giving orders?”
“No,” I said, pulling a small black police scanner from beneath my coat. “Just returning something your father lent me.”
His smile twitched.
Static crackled. Then a dispatcher’s voice cut through the rain.
“Units responding to a domestic barricade. Elderly couple trapped in basement. Suspect identified as Celeste Varden-Hale. Possible financial exploitation. Victims report life savings transferred this morning.”
Grant’s boot lifted from my body.
For the first time since I had married him, his face went stupid with fear.
May you like
I pressed the scanner into his muddy hand.
“Congratulations,” I whispered. “You defended the wrong woman.”
