Chapter 1 - The Echo of a Lie
The heavy mahogany door of my Tribeca penthouse clicked shut, locking out the freezing Manhattan wind, but it did nothing to lock out the storm raging inside my head.
Four boys. My face. My exact nervous habit of touching the back of my neck.
They were sleeping now, curled up together on the oversized sectional in my media room—a sprawling sea of navy jackets and tangled limbs that looked like a mirror image of old photographs from my own childhood. Milo, Mason, Max, and Micah. Quadruplets. Six years old, born just nine months after Mara vanished from my life.
My phone buzzed relentlessly on the marble foyer table. I didn't need to look at the screen to know it was my mother, Elena Moretti, or Arthur Vance, our family’s ruthless chief legal counsel. By now, the Cartwright family was sitting at the private chef’s table at Le Bernardin, waiting for an engagement that was supposed to cement the Moretti syndicate’s alliance with the city's most powerful shipping cartel.
Brielle Cartwright would be sipping vintage champagne, wondering why her billionaire fiancé had suddenly canceled a multi-million-dollar merger with a three-word text message.
Let her wonder. Let them all wonder.
I walked slowly down the hall, my footsteps silent on the imported oak floors, and stopped at the threshold of the media room. My eyes fixed on Mara.
She sat on the edge of a velvet armchair across from the sleeping boys, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her posture rigid. The stained server’s apron had been discarded, revealing a worn charcoal sweater that had seen better days. Her dark hair, usually pinned back in a neat bun, fell in damp strands around her pale face.
She looked exhausted, bruised by life, and utterly terrified.
"You can stop glaring at the doorway, Dominic," Mara said without turning her head. Her voice was a low, raspy whisper that cut straight through the quiet room. "I’m not going to steal your silver."
I stepped into the room, leaning against the doorframe and crossing my arms. "You didn't steal silver, Mara. You stole six years."
Her head snapped up. Her dark eyes flashed with a sudden, violent spark of fury that took my breath away. She stood up so fast the chair scraped against the rug.
"I stole them?" she hissed, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the boys. "You elite bastards love rewriting history, don't you? You pay off the right doctors, you forge the right signatures, and then you look a mother in the eye and pretend you were the victim!"
The air in the room felt suddenly sucked out.
May you like
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, pushing off the doorframe.
"Don't play stupid with me, Dominic," Mara choked out, a bitter tear finally breaking free and tracking down her cheek. "Six years ago, the night before your mother’s men cornered me in that laundromat, you sent a courier. A man with a scar across his jaw. He handed me an envelope of hush money, a one-way bus ticket out of New York, and a signed letter from you telling me that my pregnancy was a liability to your upcoming engagement to a woman of 'proper standing,' and that if I ever came near your family again, my body would end up in the Hudson."
