The first gunshot came from downstairs at 12:17 in the morning. The second thing Savannah Reed heard was her three-year-old daughter laughing. That terrified her more.

The first gunshot came from downstairs at 12:17 in the morning.

The second thing Savannah Reed heard was her three-year-old daughter laughing.

That terrified her more.

“Lucy!”

Savannah ran barefoot through the dark second-floor hallway of the Marlowe estate, one hand against the wall because the emergency lights had died with everything else. Rain hammered the tall windows overlooking Blackwater Bay. Somewhere below, men shouted over the shriek of a security alarm that worked for exactly four seconds before being strangled into silence.

Then came the crash of glass.

Savannah reached the east gallery.

“Lucy!”

A tiny figure appeared at the far end. Lucy stood in her yellow pajamas clutching Scout, her battered stuffed rabbit, beneath one arm. In her other hand she held two pieces of tarnished silver pressed together—a broken pocket watch case she must have found tucked under a cabinet.

Behind her stood a man.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Gray beginning at his temples.

Savannah’s heart stopped because she knew that face. It was Vincent Marlowe. The most feared man on the Rhode Island coast. The man whose name could make dockworkers lower their voices and businessmen suddenly remember appointments somewhere else.

Except Vincent was currently coming through the opposite doorway at the end of the hall, his hand already buried beneath the lapel of his tailored suit jacket.

Savannah looked from one man to the other in the faint moonlight streaming through the bay window.

Same height. Same sharp, angular jawline. Same piercing grey eyes. Same distinctive streak of silver at the right temple.

The stranger standing beside her daughter had a jagged white scar running along his jaw and blood soaking the entire left sleeve of his dark coat, but otherwise, it was like watching one man step out of his own reflection.

Vincent stopped dead in his tracks.

For the first time in the seven weeks Savannah had worked as his live-in maid, she saw real, unadulterated fear flash across his usually cold, unreadable face.

Not concern. Not anger. Fear.

“Evan.” Vincent’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the distant thunder.

The stranger flinched at the sound of the name, his shoulders tense.

Lucy looked up between the two identical men, completely unbothered by the blood or the guns. She held up the two silver pieces of the watch, showing how the cracked metal edges aligned perfectly.

“Look, Mommy,” Lucy chimed, her tiny voice echoing in the grand gallery. “They fit.”

A third gunshot exploded downstairs, much closer this time—right at the foot of the grand oak staircase.

Vincent crossed the hallway in three large strides, dropping his weapon just long enough to scoop Lucy up into his left arm, tucking her head against his shoulder.

The stranger, Evan, moved at the exact same instant. He stepped smoothly in front of Savannah and Lucy, turning his uninjured right side toward the staircase, positioning his body as an absolute shield against whatever danger was coming up the steps.

Savannah could barely breathe. Her lungs felt tight, her mind reeling from the impossibility of what she was seeing.

She had arrived at the sprawling, isolated Marlowe estate seven weeks earlier looking for a fresh start and a reliable paycheck to keep her daughter fed and her mother’s medical bills paid. She had expected difficult employers. She had expected long, grueling hours. She had even expected dark, high-society secrets.

She had never, in her wild imagination, expected the biggest secret buried beneath the Marlowe family empire to have Vincent Marlowe’s exact face.

Seven weeks earlier, Savannah had been sitting in the sterile, fluorescent-lit billing office of a community hospital outside Hartford, Connecticut, trying not to cry in front of her mother.

Diane Reed had another expensive dialysis appointment scheduled for Friday. There was also a fresh prescription sitting at the pharmacy counter that Savannah had not picked up yet, simply because picking it up would mean choosing between life-saving medication and another month of Lucy’s daycare fees.

At twenty-nine, Savannah had become tragically skilled at doing mental arithmetic that always ended in deficit. Rent. Utilities. Medical bills. Groceries. Daycare. Gas. Something always had to lose.

“You’re doing it again,” Diane had murmured softly from her wheelchair.

Savannah looked up, forcing a reassuring smile. “Doing what?”

“Staring at that paper like you’re trying to intimidate the total.”

“I’m close,” Savannah tried to joke, though her throat was tight. “I think it’s starting to sweat.”

Diane smiled weakly, reaching out to squeeze her daughter’s trembling fingers. “You always did have a mean stare, honey.”

Savannah laughed despite herself, wiping a rogue drop of moisture from her cheek. Just then, her cell phone buzzed loudly against the Formica tabletop.

The call came from her cousin Megan, who worked for an elite domestic staffing agency in Providence.

“I found you something, Savvy,” Megan said, skipping any greeting.

“What kind of something?”

“A job. A real one.”

“I have a job at the diner, Megs.”

“A job that pays almost three times what the diner pays,” Megan countered sharply. “With full medical benefits and private living quarters.”

Savannah sat up straight in her chair, her grip tightening on the phone. “Doing what?”

“Live-in housekeeping and light cooking for a private estate on Blackwater Bay.”

“With Lucy?” Savannah asked immediately. “I can’t leave her.”

“Allowed,” Megan confirmed. “They have a whole guest cottage behind the main garage, but you’ll sleep in the service wing of the main house during your shift weeks.”

It sounded too good to be true. Savannah knew the world well enough to know that when something sounded that generous, there was usually a trap hidden in the fine print.

“What’s the catch?” Savannah asked coldly. “Megan. What’s wrong with it?”

Megan was quiet on the other end of the line for three long seconds.

“There it is,” Savannah sighed. “Tell me.”

“Nothing is wrong with the job itself,” Megan hesitated. “It’s just... the employer. It’s Vincent Marlowe.”