Chapter 1 - ONE HOUR
Industrial-strength bleach had destroyed Sadi Hayes’s hands.
At twenty-four, her knuckles were already cracked, swollen, and bleeding from cleaning stains inside the Costello estate that nobody was foolish enough to ask about.
The mansion paid nearly three times what ordinary domestic jobs offered.
But the extra money wasn’t really for cleaning.
It paid for silence.
Employees ignored armed men arriving after midnight. They never questioned disappearing rugs or closed-door meetings. And almost nobody willingly met Victor Costello’s eyes.
Victor was the most feared man in the city.
For eight months, Sadi had survived by making herself invisible.
She worked.
She collected her paycheck.
She went home.
Every dollar went toward her sixteen-year-old brother Sam, who was being treated for leukemia.
When her savings disappeared, Sadi borrowed.
When legitimate lenders turned her away, she accepted sixty thousand dollars from Mick O’Shea, a man who called himself a private lender and made his fortune from people desperate enough to believe him.
At 1:45 one morning, while polishing a brass wall sconce outside Victor’s office, Sadi’s burner phone vibrated.
Mick sounded cheerful.
“You owe me twenty thousand dollars.”
“I know.”
“Tonight.”
Sadi’s stomach dropped.
Then Mick told her he was looking at St. Jude’s.
One of his men had entered the oncology wing.
Her brother was asleep inside.
“You have one hour,” Mick said.
“Mick, please.”
“Send twenty thousand dollars, or one of those machines stops working.”
The call ended.
Sadi slid down the hallway wall.
She covered her mouth with both bleeding hands, trying to keep her sobs silent.
Then Victor’s office door opened.
He stood above her without his jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled back, a pistol hanging loosely at his thigh.
Sadi’s blood went cold.
She tried to invent an explanation.
Before she could speak, the burner phone vibrated again.
Victor looked at the screen.
May you like
Then at her.
“Answer it.”
