Chapter 1 - The Lipstick
Grant Mercer knew something was wrong before he entered the house.
He heard Noah crying from the driveway.
Not the irritated cry his twelve-month-old son made when hungry.
This was terror.
Grant left his briefcase in the car and ran.
The front door swung open.
Inside, Tessa Monroe was on the floor.
Broken porcelain surrounded her.
One hand pressed against her temple.
Across the room, Noah sat on the sofa screaming.
Vivienne stood between them.
A jagged piece of porcelain was clenched in her hand.
She turned toward Noah.
Grant's blood went cold.
“GET AWAY FROM MY CHILD!”
Vivienne stopped.
For one terrible second, nobody moved.
Then she smiled.
“GO TO HELL!”
Grant lunged.
He caught her wrist before she reached Noah.
The shard dropped onto the rug.
Tessa crawled toward the sofa.
Grant shoved Vivienne away, grabbed Noah, and held him against his chest.
The baby buried his face against Grant's shirt.
Police arrived twelve minutes later.
An ambulance took Tessa for treatment.
Noah was examined.
The doctors found swelling and bruising but, thankfully, no life-threatening injury.
Grant sat beside his son's hospital crib feeling something inside him turn cold.
Vivienne was his fiancée.
She had lived in his house for eight months.
She had fed Noah.
Bought him clothes.
Kissed his forehead in photographs.
And apparently attacked him over lipstick.
Grant could not reconcile those two women.
Then Detective Elena Brooks asked:
“Does your house have security cameras?”
Grant looked up.
“Yes.”
Vivienne had forgotten one.
The camera above the entryway.
Grant accessed the recording with police present.
He watched Noah playing.
Vivienne approaching.
The attack.
Tessa intervening.
The fight.
The vase falling.
Then Vivienne picking up the shard.
Grant had to look away.
But Detective Brooks didn't.
She rewound.
“Mr. Mercer.”
“What?”
“Watch the vase.”
Grant looked.
When the antique vase shattered, something small and black slid across the floor.
Vivienne saw it.
Her entire expression changed.
Before approaching Noah, she kicked the object beneath the cabinet.
Grant frowned.
“What was that?”
Police returned to the house.
Beneath the cabinet they found a tiny waterproof memory card.
Grant stared at it.
The antique vase had belonged to his late wife, Caroline.
No one had touched it since she died.
Why would Caroline hide a memory card inside a vase?
And why did Vivienne look terrified when she saw it?
That night, investigators recovered the first readable file.
It was a photograph.
Caroline.
Tessa.
And Vivienne.
Standing together.
Dated four years earlier.
May you like
Grant stared.
Vivienne had always claimed she'd never met either woman before entering his life.
