Chapter 1 - Fourteen Steps
The first thing I remember is my mother-in-law’s hand against my shoulder.
The second is my husband doing nothing.
I stood at the top of the grand staircase in the lake house my grandfather had left me, clutching a leather folder so tightly that its sharp edge pressed into my palm.
Inside was the deed.
Five million dollars’ worth of waterfront property reduced to a few pages of paper.
Outside the enormous windows, late-afternoon sunlight scattered across Lake Briar like broken glass. I had loved that view since childhood. My grandfather, Everett Hale, used to stand beside me at those same windows and tell me that houses remembered the people who lived inside them.
At eight years old, I thought he meant ghosts.
At thirty-two, I understood he meant secrets.
“Hand it over, Sloan.”
Cordelia Mercer stood two feet away from me.
My mother-in-law was dressed as if she were going to a charity luncheon rather than confronting her daughter-in-law in an empty mansion. Cream silk blouse. Pearl earrings. Perfectly styled silver-blonde hair.
Only her eyes betrayed her.
They weren’t angry.
They were hungry.
“You think you deserve this house more than my son?” she demanded.
I stared at her.
“This house belonged to my grandfather.”
“And now you're married.”
“That doesn't make it Flynn's.”
Her mouth tightened.
At the bottom of the staircase, Flynn stood beside the marble entryway holding a glass of scotch.
My husband.
The man who had promised to protect me.
The man who had spent the last six months asking increasingly specific questions about the estate.
How much was it worth?
Could it be sold?
Was the shoreline privately owned?
Were there restrictions on development?
At first, I thought he was simply curious.
Then Cordelia started visiting.
Everything changed after that.
“Sloan,” Flynn said quietly, “just give her the folder.”
I looked down at him.
“Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because this has gone far enough.”
I almost laughed.
His mother had cornered me at the top of a staircase and demanded property that didn't belong to her, yet somehow I was the one taking things too far.
I held the folder closer.
“No.”
Cordelia stepped forward.
“You've always been selfish.”
“That house isn't yours.”
“My son deserves security.”
“He has security.”
“He deserves more.”
There it was.
Not love.
Not fairness.
More.
Flynn stared into his drink.
“Flynn,” I said.
He didn't answer.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, he raised his eyes.
For a second, I searched his face for the man I'd married.
I remembered our wedding.
His trembling hands as he slipped the ring onto my finger.
The night my grandfather died, when Flynn held me while I cried until sunrise.
The promises.
The plans.
The life I thought we were building.
“Tell her to stop,” I whispered.
His gaze moved toward his mother.
Then away.
That was all the warning I got.
Cordelia lunged.
Both hands struck me.
Hard.
My heel slipped from the polished wooden edge.
There was a fraction of a second when my body seemed suspended between standing and falling.
I saw Cordelia's widened eyes.
Flynn's frozen expression.
The folder leaving my fingers.
Then gravity took me.
My shoulder struck the first step.
Pain exploded through me.
My hip hit another.
Then my head.
Then my knee.
Wood.
Marble.
Wood.
Pain.
The staircase became a violent blur.
I tried grabbing the railing.
My fingers missed.
Somewhere above me, someone screamed.
Maybe it was me.
My right leg twisted underneath my body.
Something cracked.
I hit the marble floor.
Silence.
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.
I stared at the chandelier overhead while white-hot pain spread from my leg through my entire body.
Then sound slowly returned.
The ticking grandfather clock.
My own ragged breathing.
Footsteps.
Flynn.
I turned my head.
He was coming toward me.
Relief flooded through me.
“Flynn…”
My voice barely existed.
I stretched out my hand.
“Please.”
He reached me.
For one desperate second, I thought my husband was going to kneel beside me.
Instead, he stepped over my bleeding body.
I couldn't understand what I was seeing.
Then Flynn bent down.
The deed lay on the marble several feet away.
He picked it up.
My husband looked at the document.
Then at me.
“You should've just given it to her.”
Something inside me broke that had nothing to do with bones.
Behind him, Cordelia descended the staircase.
“Is she conscious?”
Flynn nodded.
Neither called an ambulance.
Neither knelt beside me.
Neither touched me.
Cordelia looked at the blood near my temple and seemed more irritated than frightened.
“What do we do?”
Flynn stared at the deed.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“We need to leave.”
I couldn't believe it.
“You're leaving me?”
Flynn avoided my eyes.
“Someone will find you.”
“Flynn…”
He turned.
I reached toward him again.
“Please.”
He stopped.
For a moment, I thought there might still be something human left inside him.
Then Cordelia touched his arm.
“Come on.”
Flynn walked away.
The front door closed.
And I was alone.
I don't know how long I lay there.
Maybe ten minutes.
Maybe forty.
Eventually, I heard tires on the gravel driveway.
Then the front door opened.
“Sloan?”
It was Mr. Danner, the caretaker.
His footsteps approached.
Then stopped.
“Oh my God.”
Everything after that came in fragments.
An ambulance.
Bright lights.
A paramedic asking my name.
Someone cutting fabric away from my swollen leg.
The ceiling of an emergency room.
Morphine.
X-rays.
A surgeon explaining fractures.
When I finally woke properly, evening sunlight had been replaced by darkness.
My right leg was trapped inside a heavy white cast.
My shoulder had been immobilized.
Purple bruises were already blooming across my skin.
A nurse noticed my eyes opening.
“Mrs. Mercer?”
I swallowed.
“My husband?”
Her hesitation told me everything.
“He isn't here.”
Of course he wasn't.
Four hours after I woke, a stranger entered carrying an envelope.
“Mrs. Sloan Mercer?”
“Yes.”
He handed it to me.
“I'm sorry.”
Divorce papers.
Flynn had filed the same day his mother pushed me down fourteen stairs.
My hands trembled as I read.
Then I reached the property section.
He wanted the lake house included in the settlement.
I read that paragraph twice.
Then something unexpected happened.
I laughed.
The nurse outside my room glanced through the doorway.
She probably thought the medication was affecting me.
It wasn't.
For the first time since falling, I remembered something my grandfather had told me years ago.
Never fight a greedy person for the bait, Sloan.
Find out why they're so eager to swallow the hook.
I picked up my phone.
My grandfather's estate attorney, Phoebe Grant, answered on the second ring.
“Sloan?”
“Draft the transfer agreement.”
Silence.
“What transfer agreement?”
“I'm giving Flynn the lake house.”
The line went completely quiet.
Finally Phoebe said, “Have you lost your mind?”
“No.”
“That property is worth nearly five million dollars.”
“I know.”
“Your husband is divorcing you.”
“I know.”
“His mother put you in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“Sloan, he'll think he won.”
I looked at my cast.
Then smiled.
“That,” I whispered, “is the point.”
Phoebe said nothing.
I lowered my voice.
“Transfer it exactly the way Grandfather structured it.”
Another silence followed.
This one was different.
Phoebe understood.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
My eyes drifted toward the dark hospital window.
“Don't warn them.”
“I won't.”
“And Phoebe?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure Flynn signs every page himself.”
Her voice changed.
“You're certain?”
I thought about Flynn stepping over my body.
I thought about Cordelia looking down at me without remorse.
Then I remembered the locked room beneath my grandfather's house.
The room I'd been forbidden to enter as a child.
“Completely.”
Because Flynn thought he was fighting me for a five-million-dollar house.
May you like
He had no idea that my grandfather had spent twenty years making sure the house could never be separated from what lay beneath it.
And soon, Flynn was going to own both.
