Chapter 1

"Matthew! Thank God," I sobbed, pressing my sweaty forehead against the locked door. "You need to come home right now. Ethan locked my mother in her room and she's having a massive asthma attack. I can't get the door open!"

The line was quiet for a second, save for the faint, elegant notes of a piano playing in the background. Then, a high, familiar voice pierced through the receiver.

"We don't care!"

"Ethan? Where is your father? Put him on the phone right now!"

"No!" my seven-year-old adopted son snapped. "Dad said she needs to die! She's nothing, and you're nothing! I don't like you anymore. Don't call us again!"

The dial tone buzzed in my ear, a mocking sound to the horrifying silence coming from the other side of the bedroom door. The desperate, rattling wheezes had stopped.

I dropped the phone, sprinting to the hallway table. I grabbed a heavy, solid brass candlestick and rushed back, swinging it at the doorknob with every ounce of strength I possessed.

The metal warped, the wood splintered, and with one final, agonizing kick, the heavy oak door burst open.

I fell to my knees.

"Mom?" I whispered, crawling across the carpet.

She lay crumpled on the hardwood floor. Her lips were a horrifying shade of blue.

Her hands were curled into tight claws, clutching the collar of her blouse where she had desperately tried to pull in air.

But it was her eyes that destroyed me. They were wide open, frozen in a state of sheer, unadulterated agony and terror.

She was gone.

The woman who had raised me, who had loved me unconditionally, had suffocated to death behind a locked door while the boy I had raised as my own laughed and hung up the phone.

Three days later, the sky wept over Ocean City.

I stood alone under a black umbrella.

"Where is Dr. Thorne?" a distant relative whispered behind me.

"And the boy? To miss his own grandmother's funeral... it's absolutely scandalous."

"I heard they haven't even been home since she passed."

I closed my eyes, letting the cold wind bite at my pale cheeks.

They were right.

Matthew and Ethan hadn't come home. They hadn't answered my calls. They hadn't even read the desperate, heartbroken text messages I sent telling them my mother was dead and the funeral was today.

For seven years, I had played the perfect wife and the devoted mother. I had married Matthew to repay a life-debt after my father saved his parents from a burning car, sacrificing his own life in the process.

I had taken in Ethan, a colicky, abandoned newborn, and loved him so fiercely I forgot he didn't share my blood.

I gave them my youth, my dreams, and my endless devotion.

And this was my reward. Standing utterly alone in a graveyard, burying my mother while my husband and son were completely absent.

The service ended.

The mourners offered their hollow condolences and scattered quickly, eager to escape the rain and the suffocating aura of my grief.

I lingered until the gravediggers finished their work, stepping forward to place a single white rose on the freshly turned soil.

"I'm so sorry, Mom," I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of my guilt. "I'm so sorry I ever brought them into our lives."

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my black wool coat.

I pulled it out, expecting a message from the funeral director or perhaps the estate lawyer. Instead, it was a text from my best friend, Sarah.

Bea, I am so sorry. I didn't want to show you this today of all days, but you need to know why they aren't there.

Below the text was a link to a trending entertainment news article.

My thumb hovered over the screen, trembling violently. I clicked it.

A high-definition photo loaded instantly, bright and sickeningly joyful. It was taken at the international airport terminal this morning.

There was Matthew, looking handsome and completely captivated, holding a massive bouquet of red roses. Beside him was Ethan, sitting on top of a designer luggage cart, laughing with pure, unadulterated joy.

And standing between them, wrapping her arms around both of their necks, was a stunning woman with flowing blonde hair.

Elara Croft.

Matthew's ex-wife. Ethan's biological mother. The woman who had abandoned them seven years ago for a music career in Europe, leaving me to pick up the broken pieces of their family.

The headline read: A Symphony of Reunion! Piano Prodigy Elara Croft Returns to the States, Welcomed by Ex-Husband Dr. Matthew Thorne and Son.

I scrolled down, my vision blurring with hot tears, but the words burned themselves into my retinas.

Sources say Dr. Thorne and his son have been inseparable from Ms. Croft since her secret recital three days ago. The trio was spotted checking into the penthouse suite of the Plaza Hotel, looking every bit the perfect, reunited family.

The pain in my chest stopped.

While I was breaking down a door to reach my dying mother, my husband was welcoming back the woman who broke his heart.

While I was burying the only family I had left, they were playing house in a luxury penthouse, ignoring my calls.

I looked down at the fresh grave, the heavy rain washing away the last of my tears.

"You want her to be your mother, Ethan?" I whispered to the empty graveyard, my voice dripping with a deadly, terrifying calm. "And you want your family back, Matthew?"

I turned my back on the grave and walked away, leaving my umbrella behind.

"Fine. I'll give you exactly what you want."