Grant told me the blood running down my face was “the price I had to pay,” so I picked up my phone and froze every account his family controlled.

Grant wanted me quiet.

Celeste wanted me dead behind the eyes again.

Only one of them had ever been good at getting what they wanted from me.

And after that night, he never would again.

“Ma’am, you need stitches,” the paramedic said gently.

His name tag read Ruiz. He was young, kind, and trying very hard not to stare at the Blackwood family portraits staring down from the walls like judges at a hanging.

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll go with you in a moment.”

Grant gave a sharp laugh. “You’ll go now.”

Officer Melinda Price, who had arrived with the ambulance, turned her body slightly toward him.

“Sir, I need you to step back.”

Grant looked offended.

Blackwoods were not used to uniforms telling them where to stand.

“This is a family matter,” he said.

Officer Price’s expression did not change. “A woman has a head injury. That makes it my matter.”

Something in my chest loosened.

Not safety.

Not yet.

But air.

Celeste floated forward, wrapped in gold silk and poison.

“Officer, my daughter-in-law has been under enormous emotional strain. She issued a reckless corporate order during dinner. My son tried to calm her. Unfortunately, there was an accident with a plate.”

I touched the bandage Ruiz had pressed against my temple.

“Grant threw it at me.”

Grant’s jaw hardened.

Officer Price looked at me. “You’re willing to make that statement formally?”

“Yes.”

Celeste’s eyes flashed.

Across the room, three Blackwood wives looked down at their laps.

Not one spoke.

I knew then that some of them had been hit before.

Maybe not with porcelain.

Maybe not in front of dinner guests.

But hit in ways that never left marks good enough for police reports.

Ruiz insisted on cleaning the wound before moving me. While he worked, I watched the servants move like shadows around the room.

Marie was gone.

The white card burned inside my fist.

West wing piano.

Under the third pedal.

Blackwood House was not a house. It was a stone monument to inherited cruelty, with seventeen bedrooms, two libraries, a ballroom no one used, and a west wing kept mostly closed except for Christmas tours and donor luncheons.

The west wing piano had belonged to Grant’s grandmother, Beatrice Blackwood. A nine-foot Steinway under a portrait of a woman who had allegedly drowned herself in Maine the summer after her husband was indicted for bribery.

I had never liked that portrait.

Beatrice Blackwood looked too awake to be dead.

“I need the restroom before we leave,” I said.

Grant’s head snapped toward me.

Celeste’s mouth tightened.

Officer Price said, “I’ll accompany you.”

“No need,” Celeste said quickly. “I’ll show her.”

Officer Price gave her the kind of smile women learn to use when they have already seen enough.

“I wasn’t asking.”

We left the dining room together.

The moment we turned the corner, I stopped pretending to be weak.

“I don’t need the restroom,” I whispered.

Officer Price looked at me.

“I need to retrieve evidence before they destroy it.”

Her eyes flicked to the blood at my hairline.

“What evidence?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s not usually how evidence works.”

“In this family, it is.”

For three seconds, she studied me.

Then she said, “Where?”

“West wing.”

We moved fast.

Behind us, I heard Grant’s voice rising. Celeste answered, low and sharp. A door slammed somewhere.

Officer Price kept one hand near her radio as we crossed the marble hall.

“Mrs. Blackwood, are there firearms in the house?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

I almost laughed.

“Registered or real?”

She did not laugh.

“Real.”

“Enough.”

The west wing smelled of lemon oil and closed windows. The piano sat beneath Beatrice’s portrait, black and glossy as still water. Moonlight slid across its lid.

I knelt, ignoring the pain that pulsed through my skull.

The third pedal looked ordinary.

I pressed beneath it.

Nothing.

I felt along the brass hardware.

Still nothing.

Then Officer Price crouched beside me and pointed.

“There.”

A tiny notch had been cut into the underside of the pedal box.

I slid my fingernail into it.

A narrow panel clicked loose.

Inside was a silver flash drive, a brass key, and a folded photograph.

Officer Price put on gloves before touching them.

The photograph was old. At least twenty years. It showed a little girl standing on the front steps of Blackwood House beside Marie the housekeeper.

The girl had dark hair, solemn eyes, and a birthmark near her left collarbone.

On the back, someone had written:

Eleanor Blackwood. Age six. Hidden, not dead.

I stared at the name.

“Who is Eleanor?” Officer Price asked.

“I don’t know.”

But that was not entirely true.

I had heard the name once.

Five years earlier, during my first Blackwood Christmas, I had wandered into the family chapel and found Grant drunk beneath the stained glass window. He had looked at the empty front pew and muttered, “Eleanor should have been here.”

When I asked who Eleanor was, he smiled and said, “A ghost.”

Then he kissed me hard enough to make me forget the question.

A sound came from the hall.

Footsteps.

Officer Price stood.

Grant appeared in the doorway with two private security guards behind him.

His eyes landed on the open compartment.

Then on the flash drive.

Then on me.

“You never could leave locked things alone,” he said.

Officer Price moved between us.

“Sir, step back.”