Chapter 1 - The Ring on the Glass
Nathan's hand connected with my face before I could finish saying his name.
The first slap sent my head turning toward a glass display filled with emerald necklaces.
The second knocked me backward against the counter, and I lost my balance, landing hard on the polished marble floor of his Madison Avenue jewelry store.
For a moment, all I could hear was the soft music playing through the ceiling speakers.
Nathan stood over me, breathing heavily.
Celeste Rowan watched from beside a brightly illuminated jewelry case, wearing a champagne-colored silk dress and a smile that made my stomach turn.
She didn't move to help me.
"Why are you here?" Nathan demanded.
"Are you following me now? You can't just show up and cause a scene."
I touched my cheek.
Blood filled my mouth where my teeth had cut the inside of it.
Near the entrance, an employee stopped arranging a tray of jewelry.
Another worker looked down at the floor.
Nobody said anything.
Four years earlier, Nathan had slipped a diamond ring onto my finger and promised that we would build something beautiful together.
Now he had struck me in front of the woman he'd been sleeping with for six months.
I pushed myself upright.
"I came to give you something back."
My fingers trembled as I removed my wedding ring.
I placed it carefully on the glass counter.
Celeste's smile widened.
"I guess she finally understands," she murmured.
I ignored her.
"My lawyer will be claiming half your shares by tomorrow," I told Nathan.
His expression changed.
The anger disappeared so quickly that it almost frightened me.
"Emma, wait."
I turned toward the entrance.
"Emma, you don't understand what you're doing."
"That's funny," I said quietly.
"Because for the first time in four years, I think I do."
He followed me halfway across the showroom.
"Don't make this ugly."
I looked back at the woman standing beside him.
"You already did."
Outside, I climbed into a cab and photographed my swelling cheek before calling Maya Ortiz.
Maya had been my attorney for only eight days.
In those eight days, she'd uncovered enough irregularities in my mother's company records to make me question almost everything I believed about my marriage.
"Did you go to the store?" she asked.
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"Nathan hit me. Twice."
She went silent.
Then her voice sharpened.
"Are you safe?"
"I'm in a cab."
"Go directly to urgent care. I'll meet you there. And Emma?"
"Yes?"
"Don't speak to him again."
I stared through the window at the traffic moving along Madison Avenue.
"I need you to preserve the security footage," I said.
"We will."
"And I need that shareholder meeting stopped."
Maya exhaled.
"We're working on it."
The meeting was scheduled for Friday.
My twenty-ninth birthday.
It was also the day a document bearing my forged signature supposedly transferred the voting rights attached to my forty-two percent ownership interest in Vale Atelier to Nathan.
My mother, Louise Vale, had spent thirty years building the workshop.
Nathan intended to sell it.
And unless we could prove the document was fraudulent, he might have enough voting power to make that happen.
The signature looked convincing.
The notary stamp appeared legitimate.
But I had been in Portland, Oregon, with my aunt on the day I supposedly signed it.
I had never authorized Nathan to vote my shares.
That evening, after a doctor examined my injuries and I gave a statement to the police, my phone vibrated.
The message came from Ruth Miller, my mother's retired bookkeeper.
There was a photograph attached.
A gray-haired man stood outside a small repair shop in Vermont.
He held a jeweler's loupe against one eye.
His faded green field jacket looked painfully familiar.
So did the pale scar running across his left thumb.
I enlarged the photograph.
My breath stopped.
I had seen that face in framed photographs, birthday albums, and dreams for seventeen years.
Martin Vale.
My father.
The man whose empty coffin I had watched disappear into the ground when I was twelve.
Below the photograph, Ruth had written:
Emma, I think you deserve the truth.
May you like
Then another message arrived.
Please don't tell Nathan I've contacted you. I believe he's already found your father.
