Chapter 1 - The Red Button
My water broke the moment Daniel shoved me down the frozen marble steps.
Pain tore through my ankle. Snow filled the collar of my white coat, and the divorce papers he had thrown after me scattered across the front lawn like dirty white birds.
Daniel stood above me in his black overcoat, calm and satisfied.
“Freeze out here, you worthless dog,” he said. “Tonight, my real family moves in.”
Behind the glass doors of the mansion, warm golden light glowed over the Christmas garlands I had hung myself. Vanessa stood in the foyer wearing my silk robe, one hand resting over the rounded stomach beneath it.
She smiled when she saw me struggling to breathe.
“Daniel,” she called sweetly. “Is she still breathing?”
“Unfortunately.”
Another contraction folded me over my belly.
Daniel crouched beside me and pressed his heel against my injured ankle. His cologne smelled sharp and expensive against the cold air.
“By morning, the lawyers will say you abandoned your child and suffered a breakdown,” he whispered. “The psychiatric report is already signed.”
He dropped a pen beside the divorce papers.
“This mansion will be mine before your body is warm.”
Daniel loved noise. He loved begging. He had spent three years building his confidence on the belief that I would eventually become too frightened to resist him.
I wiped blood and snow from my mouth.
Then I smiled.
His expression changed.
“What is funny?”
I slipped the small black remote from the sleeve of my pale blue maternity dress.
The mansion had belonged to my mother before it belonged to me. I had designed its modern security system myself, and Daniel had never known that every exterior lock could be controlled from one device.
“Then I hope she enjoys the basement,” I whispered.
I pressed the red button.
The glass doors slammed shut behind Daniel. Steel bolts locked inside the frames. Red emergency lights began flashing through the foyer.
Vanessa spun toward the security panel.
A piercing gas alarm screamed inside the mansion.
Daniel lunged for the remote, but his shoes slipped on the ice. I pulled it against my chest and stared up at him through the falling snow.
Behind the glass, Vanessa hammered both hands against the door.
“Daniel, open it!”
He struck the keypad.
Nothing happened.
The mansion’s automated voice echoed through the foyer.
“Gas leak detected. Basement archive breached. Emergency containment activated.”
Daniel slowly turned toward me.
“What did you put in the basement?”
“I did not put anything there.”
His face lost color.
From somewhere beneath the mansion, a man began pounding against a locked metal door.
Then a weak voice came through the outdoor intercom.
“Claire, do not let Daniel open the archive.”
I recognized the voice.
It belonged to Henry Walsh, my mother’s attorney.
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The man Daniel had told me died two weeks earlier.
Continue to the next part: Claire must survive labor in the snow while the supposedly dead attorney reveals why Daniel needed the mansion before sunrise.
