Chapter 1 - THE MAID IN THE SNOW
Hannah Reed, a thirty-one-year-old live-in maid at the Mercer estate outside Philadelphia, had learned that Dominic Mercer was feared by almost everyone except his seven-year-old daughter, Lily. Since Lily's mother died four years earlier, the little girl had carried her mother's tiny silver bell everywhere. Whenever she was frightened, she rang it, and Dominic came.
On the afternoon of Dominic's winter charity gala, Hannah found that bell hidden beneath Lily's mattress beside a strip of blue satin carrying a chilling warning: DON'T DRINK THE RED ONE. Dominic's fiancée, Caroline, caught Hannah with the message, took the satin from her, and later Hannah was deliberately knocked down stone steps. Caroline found her suspiciously fast and warned her to “stop finding things.”
Later, Caroline locked injured Hannah outside in the snow without a coat. Dominic arrived early, found her freezing, and noticed Lily's bell clenched in her hand. He immediately sensed something was wrong.
Searching Lily's bedroom, Dominic learned Caroline had lied about Hannah stealing jewelry. Hannah also revealed that Lily had recently asked why Caroline gave Dominic red medicine when his usual pills were white.
Then Lily disappeared.
A second blue satin message led Dominic and Hannah into the bedroom of Dominic's late wife, where a hidden service room contained medicine bottles, a red-stained glass, Lily's stuffed horse, and a recorder. On it, Lily spoke with an elderly woman Dominic believed had died four years earlier—his wife's former private nurse.
Moments later, the nurse appeared downstairs with Lily and accused Caroline of lying about knowing Dominic's wife. She produced a photograph showing Caroline in hospital scrubs holding a red medicine bottle.
But Lily had another photograph.
It was dated two days after her mother's funeral.
Dominic's supposedly deceased wife was alive in it.
And beside her stood someone Dominic trusted completely.
Before Lily could explain, every light in the mansion went black.
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The nurse screamed:
“DOMINIC—DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOUR DAUGHTER AGAIN!”
