Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN ON THE FLOOR
At one in the morning, I woke to the sound of glass shattering inside my mother’s conservatory.
Not the soft breaking of a wineglass.
Not an accident.
A violent crash.
I crossed the hallway without turning on the lights and pushed open the conservatory door.
Lamplight spilled across shattered glass.
A woman in a pale blue nurse’s uniform lay face down on the marble floor.
Her hair had been torn loose.
Blood was beginning to darken one side of her temple.
Standing over her was my fiancée.
Celeste Vandermark.
The woman I was supposed to marry in less than three weeks.
Her evening gown was immaculate.
Her hair was perfect.
And wrapped around one hand was a silk scarf she had apparently been using to drag the unconscious nurse toward the cellar door.
Celeste looked at me.
Then she smiled.
“Go back to bed.”
Her voice was perfectly calm.
“I’ve taken care of it.”
Half of Chicago lowered its voice when speaking my name.
Men who controlled docks, unions, judges, and businesses called me before making moves on the South Side.
Yet I stood there barefoot among broken glass, unable to speak.
The nurse stirred.
I knelt beside her.
Her eyes opened.
She ignored Celeste.
She looked directly at me.
“She knows about Ewan.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Ewan was my younger brother.
Ewan had died six years earlier in the Pier 44 fire.
Or so I believed.
The ambulance arrived minutes later.
I told Celeste to remain at the estate.
For the first time since I had known her, she had no answer.
At the hospital, I finally asked my driver the question I should have asked two years earlier.
“What is the nurse’s name?”
“Delia Marie Marlowe.”
He answered instantly.
Two years.
The man who drove my car knew her full name.
I did not.
Near dawn, I was allowed into her room.
Delia was pale.
Two fingers were splinted.
Her head was bandaged.
And the first thing she did was give me instructions about my mother.
“Turn her every two hours.”
“Delia—”
“Her left shoulder needs support.”
She winced.
“The morning medication changed last week.”
Even after being attacked, she was thinking about my mother.
When she finally finished, I pulled a chair closer.
“Who was Ewan to you?”
Delia looked toward the window.
Snow drifted past the hospital lights.
“I’ll tell you.”
She swallowed.
“But first I need a promise.”
“You have it.”
“No.”
She turned back toward me.
“I don’t want the promise of a boss.”
I said nothing.
“A boss keeps a promise until it becomes inconvenient.”
Her eyes remained fixed on mine.
“I need the promise of a son.”
I understood.
So I gave it.
May you like
Then Delia whispered the sentence that changed everything.
“Ewan was my husband.”
