Chapter 1
Dominic did not remove the object from his mother’s handbag immediately.
He simply stared into it.
The rage that had been visible when Lucian swung at him disappeared.
That frightened the room more.
“Mom,” Dominic said.
Margaret was still leaning against the marble console.
“I’m fine.”
“You hit your back.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Ava clung to Dominic’s trouser leg.
“Daddy, look at Grandma’s thing.”
Dominic already had.
Inside Margaret’s handbag lay Ava’s stuffed rabbit.
At least, what remained of it.
The pale fabric along its back had been carefully opened at the seam.
Margaret had folded the stuffing aside.
Buried inside the toy was a black electronic device no larger than Dominic’s thumb.
A tiny microphone.
A memory card.
And a blinking locator module.
Dominic slowly reached inside.
Valeria scrambled upright beside the overturned champagne cart.
“That isn’t what you think.”
Dominic looked at her.
“I haven’t said what I think.”
Lucian pushed a broken section of the wine display away from his shoulders.
“Somebody planted that.”
Margaret gave a humorless laugh.
“Yes.”
Lucian looked at her.
Margaret continued.
“That would be the problem.”
Dominic removed the device.
Ava stared at her damaged rabbit.
“Why is Bunny broken?”
Dominic immediately closed his hand around the recorder.
He crouched.
“Grandma found something inside him.”
Ava frowned.
“Like a treasure?”
Margaret’s face crumpled for half a second.
Dominic saw it.
“No, sweetheart,” he said. “Not treasure.”
He handed Ava to one of the housekeepers and instructed her to take the child upstairs.
Ava resisted.
“I want Grandma.”
Margaret touched her granddaughter’s cheek.
“I’ll come up in a minute.”
Only after Ava disappeared around the staircase did Dominic turn back.
“Where did you find it?”
Margaret lifted the damaged rabbit from her handbag.
“Ava slept at my apartment last night.”
Dominic remembered.
A scheduling conflict had kept him at a business dinner until nearly midnight.
Valeria had claimed she was attending a charity committee meeting.
Margaret offered to keep Ava.
“This morning she asked me to fix Bunny,” Margaret continued. “She said his back felt funny.”
Margaret had noticed the seam.
It had been opened and resewn with thread slightly darker than the original stitching.
She expected to find a broken music box.
Instead she found the recorder.
Margaret had spent forty years around men who hid things.
She had not touched the memory card.
She placed the entire toy inside her handbag and came directly to Dominic.
“I called you twice,” she said.
Dominic checked his phone.
No missed calls.
Margaret continued.
“Valeria answered.”
Dominic slowly looked toward his fiancée.
Valeria’s lips parted.
“I told her you were busy.”
“You told me Dominic wasn’t home,” Margaret said.
“I thought he had left.”
“He was twenty feet away.”
Valeria’s expression hardened.
“You came here looking for a confrontation.”
“I came here because somebody put a recording device inside my granddaughter’s toy.”
Lucian stood.
“That could have come from anywhere.”
Dominic looked at him.
“You tried to leave with it.”
“I was taking it somewhere secure.”
“You punched me when I stopped you.”
Lucian said nothing.
Dominic held up the tiny device.
“Who put this inside my daughter’s rabbit?”
Neither sibling answered.
Dominic had spent thirty years learning how silence worked.
There was frightened silence.
Defiant silence.
Ignorant silence.
This was coordinated silence.
He looked toward the bodyguards.
“Lock the exterior doors.”
Valeria stared at him.
“Dominic.”
“Phones on the console.”
Lucian laughed.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
Dominic’s eyes stayed on him.
“Then you should have no problem proving it.”
One by one, the bodyguards placed their phones down.
Margaret placed hers beside them.
Dominic added his own.
Valeria did not move.
Neither did Lucian.
Dominic looked at the siblings.
May you like
And suddenly the broken rabbit in his hand felt less like evidence of one invasion.
It felt like the first visible piece of something that had been happening inside his home for a long time.
