The flight from Chicago had landed four hours ahead of schedule, sparing Mark Vance another night in a sterile hotel room.

By 3:00 PM, Elise Vance was panicking, though anyone watching her in her Greenwich penthouse dressing room wouldn't know it.

She sat in front of a three-way gilded vanity mirror, allowing her makeup artist to apply foundation over the slight shadows under her eyes. Her phone had been buzzing non-stop for twelve hours.

Mark hadn't answered any of her forty-two calls. He hadn't returned a single text.

*“Mark, please let’s talk! You’re taking this out of context!”*

*“I know I lost my temper, but Lily was being impossible!”*

*“Where did you take our daughter? If you don't bring her home, I'm calling the police!”*

Silence. Not a single notification read receipt.

When she had checked the garage at dawn, his car was gone. Rosa’s quarters were completely empty; all the maid’s uniforms and personal belongings had been cleared out. Elise had immediately called her father, Judge Arthur Sterling-Caldwell, but his administrative assistant reported that the retired judge was on a fishing yacht off the coast of Maine with no cell reception.

"Julian," Elise snapped into her AirPods, waving her makeup artist out of the room with an impatient flick of her wrist. "Did the final wire clear?"

On the other end of the line, Julian Mercer’s smooth, velvet voice came through with an easy chuckle. "Five hundred thousand cleared this morning, darling. That makes 1.5 million safely tucked away in Grand Cayman. Our tickets to Zurich are booked for Monday night. What’s with the frantic tone? You sound like you’re being hunted."

"Mark came home early," Elise hissed, rising from the vanity and pacing across the plush Persian rug. "Last night. He caught me."

There was a brief pause on the line. "Caught you doing what?"

"Disciplining the brat," she whispered harshly. "He saw the bowl. He saw the maid. He took Lily to the hospital."

Julian cursed under his breath. "Elise, you idiot! I told you not to touch the kid! You were supposed to play the saintly mother until the entire trust fund was moved into the foundation accounts!"

"Don't you dare talk down to me!" she snarled back. "You have no idea what it's like living with Sarah’s ghost in this house! Every time that little brat looks at me with those pathetic cow eyes, she reminds Mark of her dead mother! I had to break her! I couldn't risk her talking!"

"Well, is Mark going to the police?"

"I don't know," Elise said, chewing nervously on a manicured thumbnail. "He threatened me, but Mark is obsessed with his reputation. He hates public scandal. He's probably hiding in a private suite at Greenwich Hospital trying to figure out how to sweep it under the rug without the press finding out."

"Are you still going to the gala tonight?" Julian asked.

"Of course I am!" Elise said defiantly, straightening her spine and glancing at the emerald-green silk ballgown hanging from the armoire. "The entire New York social register will be there. The Governor's wife is sitting at my table! If I don't show up, it looks like an admission of guilt. If Mark tries to pull anything, I will play the devastated, loving wife who was blindsided by his accusations. The press will eat him alive."

"Play your cards right, Elise," Julian warned. "The Zurich flight leaves at midnight tomorrow. If you blow this, I don't know you."

The call disconnected.

Elise stared at her reflection in the gilded glass. She smoothed the silk robe over her waist, forced her lips into a radiant, angelic smile, and practiced her tone in the mirror.

"Thank you all so much for coming tonight," she murmured softly, her eyes glistening with rehearsed, faux-maternal tears. "Every child deserves a safe haven. Every child deserves to be cherished."