Chapter 2

Tessa raised her hand, then noticed Miles watching and let it fall.

“She ruined them,” she whispered. “After all that work you did for me.”

Miles seized my wrist.

“Leave.”

I pulled out my phone and started dialing 911. He snatched it before the call connected and smashed it against the terrace wall.

“Stop making a scene.”

Security dragged me toward a waiting car.

Behind them, Tessa smiled.

“This is what happens when you tell people you'll never get married. They all think they have a chance.”

Miles kissed her hand.

“Maybe I just hadn't met the right woman.”

Through the car window, I watched fireworks burst over the slate roof. My mother had spent a year finding craftsmen to restore the carved wooden eaves below it.

A spark caught there.

At first it looked no bigger than a candle. Then flame ran beneath the gutter.

“Stop the car.”

The driver kept going.

I reached for the door. A guard caught me hard enough to send my head against the window, and the world went black.

When I woke, I was in the townhouse in Boston. Miles's new house manager stood at my bedroom door.

“He asked us to give you time to calm down.”

He wouldn't let me leave.

The people I'd hired were gone. The people Miles had hired watched the doors.

He had been preparing for this longer than I had known.

I still had an old tablet in the desk. The estate's exterior cameras were linked to an account in my name.

Firefighters had put out the blaze. The roof was black. Water ran down the painted paneling.

I saved the footage before Miles could remember it existed.

Then another clip loaded: Miles carrying Tessa through the garden entrance toward my parents' bedroom, laughing as though nothing important had been lost.