Chapter 1 - THE GIRL WHO WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE“DON’T LET HER SEE ME!”
“DON’T LET HER SEE ME!”
The little girl’s scream stopped Daniel Mercer cold.
He had barely touched her trembling shoulder when she recoiled against the hallway wall, clutching the white wedding dress around her knees. Tears streaked her cheeks. Her veil hung crooked over tangled blonde hair, and terror—not sadness—filled her eyes.
“Who?” Daniel whispered. “Who can’t see you?”
The girl looked toward the far end of the corridor.
Daniel followed her gaze.
Nothing moved beneath the elegant chandeliers. The wedding reception downstairs was still alive with music, laughter, and champagne glasses. Yet up here, beyond the ballroom, the mansion felt strangely silent.
Then the girl whispered something that made his stomach tighten.
“The woman marrying my daddy.”
Daniel stared at her.
Tonight, his younger brother Michael was marrying Vanessa Caldwell, a beautiful socialite who had entered their family less than a year earlier. Everyone downstairs believed Michael’s nine-year-old daughter, Lily, was spending the wedding weekend with her grandmother.
But Lily was sitting here.
Wearing a flower-girl dress.
Crying.
“You’re supposed to be in Connecticut,” Daniel said carefully.
Lily shook her head.
“She brought me back.”
“Vanessa?”
Lily nodded.
Daniel crouched lower.
“Why?”
The child opened her mouth, but footsteps suddenly echoed from somewhere behind them.
Click.
Click.
Click.
High heels.
Lily’s face went white.
“She found me.”
Daniel immediately stood and stepped between Lily and the approaching sound.
“Stay behind me.”
The footsteps stopped.
A shadow appeared beneath the doorway at the corridor’s end.
Daniel waited.
The door slowly opened.
But it wasn’t Vanessa.
It was a hotel employee carrying towels.
Daniel released the breath he had been holding. When he turned around, however, Lily was already pulling something from beneath the folds of her dress.
A black smartphone.
Its screen was cracked.
“Where did you get that?”
“It’s Daddy’s old phone.”
“Why do you have it?”
Lily looked toward the stairs before pressing the device into Daniel’s hand.
“Because she thought I deleted the video.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
“What video?”
Lily began crying harder.
“The one where she told the man what she was going to do after the wedding.”
Daniel looked down at the phone.
The battery showed four percent.
His thumb hovered over the gallery icon.
“Lily, what man?”
She grabbed his wrist.
“Uncle Daniel…”
Her voice became barely audible.
“She said Daddy wouldn’t survive the honeymoon.”
For several seconds, Daniel couldn’t move.
Music drifted faintly from downstairs.
Michael was standing beneath an arch of white roses, waiting to marry Vanessa in less than twenty minutes.
And somewhere inside a cracked phone was a video that might prove his bride was planning to make him a widower before their honeymoon was over.
Daniel unlocked the screen.
One video remained.
Duration: forty-seven seconds.
Before he could press play, the phone went black.
The battery had died.
Then a woman’s voice floated down the corridor.
“Daniel?”
He slowly looked up.
Vanessa stood at the other end of the hallway.
May you like
Smiling.
And Lily was no longer behind him.
Related Stories
