Chapter 1
My ex-husband’s two sisters broke eleven of my eight-year-old daughter’s bones with a metal bar because she refused to record a lie about me. From her hospital bed, Elise whispered, “Mom, they took turns... and they said when you came home, they’d deal with you too.” They thought I was just an Army desk clerk overseas, but after my commander heard the recording she had secretly made, he looked at me and said, “Take the whole team home.”
My phone screen looked like a graveyard of panic.
Six missed calls.
All from Elise.
Then my ex-husband, Ryan, called.
“Nia, answer me.”
I had never heard fear like that in his voice.
“What happened?”
“Elise is in the hospital.”
I shot to my feet so fast my chair slammed into the wall.
“What happened to my daughter?”
Silence.
Then he whispered two names.
“Tessa and Morgan.”
His sisters.
The same women who told everyone in their wealthy little community that they loved Elise like their own child.
I hung up and called the hospital.
When the pediatric trauma unit finally connected me to her room, I could hear the soft hiss of oxygen through the phone.
“Elise?”
“Mom?”
Her voice nearly broke me.
“I’m here, bug.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. But I’m here now.”
She struggled through every word.
“Aunt Tessa got mad.”
“Why, baby?”
“They wanted me to make a video. They wanted me to say you leave because you don’t want me. Aunt Morgan said Dad needed me to say it right so everyone would believe it.”
My entire body went cold.
“What happened when you refused?”
Nothing.
Then came a whisper.
“They hurt me, Mom.”
I closed my eyes.
“They took turns.”
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.
Then Elise said something worse.
“They told me you were far away. They said when you came back... they’d deal with you too.”
The anger disappeared.
What replaced it was colder.
“Stay with the nurse,” I told her. “I’m coming home.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, bug?”
“I made a recording.”
I froze.
“What recording?”
The line suddenly went dead.
I stared at the phone.
My eight-year-old daughter had been so frightened of her own family that she'd thought to preserve evidence before anyone could silence her.
Minutes later, I played my commander the messages and showed him the missed calls.
He listened without interrupting.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Take the whole team home.”
Tessa and Morgan still believed I was a harmless Army desk clerk stationed thousands of miles away.
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They had no idea what my real job was.
And they had no idea I was already coming for my daughter.
