Chapter 1 - The Little Girl Who Saw Too Much
The night Dashiell Mercer was supposed to celebrate becoming a father, a three-year-old girl said six words that threatened to destroy everything he believed.
“Mister, that lady took her belly off upstairs.”
Nearly four hundred guests had gathered inside Manhattan's magnificent Halston Grand Ballroom for a Mercer-Hawthorne Foundation benefit. Dashiell, thirty-nine, stood beside his beautiful fiancée, Corinne Bellamy, who appeared five months pregnant.
Their unborn child was supposed to become the next heir to the Mercer family fortune.
But little Poppy Reyes had seen something strange.
Her mother, Maris, was a banquet server who had brought Poppy to work after her babysitter canceled. While waiting near the staff corridor, Poppy had watched Corinne enter an upstairs room with a large pregnant belly.
When Corinne came out, her stomach was smaller.
And a man had helped her remove something.
Dashiell initially wanted to dismiss the child's story. He had already decorated a nursery and placed his late mother's rocking chair beside the window.
He wanted desperately to believe he was becoming a father.
But Poppy identified the man who had helped Corinne.
Merrick Sloan.
The sixty-one-year-old attorney had served the Mercer family for decades. He was also responsible for protecting the complicated trust established by Dashiell's grandfather.
When confronted, Corinne claimed she had merely adjusted her dress upstairs.
But her explanation fell apart when Poppy mentioned a blue bag.
“He put the tummy in the blue bag,” the little girl said.
Within minutes, Merrick disappeared from the ballroom.
Dashiell ordered his security team to investigate.
Against her better judgment, Maris agreed to let Poppy show them where she had seen the strange exchange.
The child led them upstairs to a locked service room.
Then Dashiell's security chief received disturbing news.
Merrick had been spotted taking the service elevator toward the loading garage.
He was carrying a large blue bag.
Corinne turned deathly pale.
And as Dashiell watched her reaction, he understood something frightening.
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The false pregnancy might be only the beginning.
Whatever waited behind that locked door could destroy the Mercer family.
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