“Scream all you want! Nolan is on a plane to Tokyo, and nobody is coming to save you.”
Those were the first words Nolan Pierce heard when he unlocked his front door at 1:47 a.m.
A violent thunderstorm had grounded his flight at Crownspire International Airport, sending him home without warning. All he wanted was to wrap his arms around his wife, Elara, and hold her close. Three months pregnant, she had been battling relentless morning sickness for weeks.
Instead, a metallic thud cracked through the second-floor hallway. Glass shattered. Then came a muffled groan that turned his blood to ice.
Nolan dropped his garment bag onto the foyer floor and sprinted up the stairs.
The master bedroom door stood half-open, a wedge of yellow light cutting across the hallway.
Elara was crumpled on the hardwood floor, clutching her stomach with both arms. Her lip was split and bleeding, her cheek badly bruised, and the strap of her nightgown torn off one shoulder. Looming directly over her was Nolan’s mother, Maribel, holding her down by her hair.
“Tell me the combination to the safe!” Maribel snarled, shaking her. “Do you honestly think you’re getting your hands on my son’s wealth? You were a nobody before you trapped him!”
A few feet away, Nolan’s younger sister, Tessa, was repeatedly slamming a heavy claw hammer into the electronic keypad of the built-in wall safe. On the bed lay an open duffel bag packed with thick stacks of cash, deed documents, and several gold bars from his private office.
“Mom, stop wasting time!” Tessa yelled, wiping sweat from her forehead. “If she won’t talk, give her something real to cry about! We need those bearer bonds in our hands tonight!”
A cold, jagged rage drove through Nolan’s chest.
For years, he had bankrolled his mother and sister without question. When Elara got pregnant, Maribel had insisted on moving into their suburban estate in Bellhaven, Alderwyn, claiming she wanted to “cherish and care for her like a daughter.”
Nolan had believed her—every careful, poisonous word.
His first instinct was to burst into the room and tear them away, but he checked himself at the threshold. If he reacted with physical violence, they would spin it as a messy domestic dispute, playing the victims to the police.
He pulled his smartphone from his coat pocket.
