Chapter 1 - the fall Adrian thought would finish me
My husband smiled as he peeled my last finger from the balcony ledge.
Thirty floors below, Manhattan glittered like broken glass, cold and indifferent. The wind knifed through my torn gown. Blood ran down my wrist where Adrian had crushed my hand against the bronze railing, and his face hovered above mine with the same beautiful calm he wore at charity galas and board dinners.
“Did you really think a peasant like you would survive in my world?” he whispered.
Then he let go.
For two violent seconds I fell through open air, and I saw exactly what Adrian expected to see in my eyes—terror, surrender, the final understanding that he had won.
Instead, I looked past him at the bronze falcon mounted above the balcony door.
At the tiny black lens hidden inside its eye.
Then I hit the reinforced glass awning one floor below.
The impact cracked through my shoulder like lightning. The glass boomed beneath me, spiderwebbing but holding, just as I had calculated during the façade renovation Adrian never bothered to understand. I rolled hard, bit back a scream, and found the hidden override switch beneath the steel frame.
When I pressed it, the shutters slammed across the balcony doors above me.
Sirens began to rise from the street below.
And somewhere inside the penthouse, the first encrypted upload left the building.
Adrian thought he had just finished the problem.
May you like
He had no idea he had triggered the evidence.
At that exact moment, my ballroom microphone went live.
