Chapter 1 — The Blow

My brother hit me before the final prayer had finished.

It was one blow, open and fast, and it split my lip and rocked me back against the pew, and the sound of it — the flat crack of it in a quiet church — was somehow worse than the pain.

My aunt screamed.

Two of our cousins had Leon by the arms before I had fully understood what had happened, dragging him backward down the aisle while he strained against them.

“Give me the safe key!” he was shouting.

“She’s stealing my inheritance!”

I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and stood up straight.

The mourners were staring at me the way people stare at an accident, half horrified and half unable to look away, and I understood that to most of them this was, suddenly, the most interesting funeral they had ever attended.

Leon had always known how to turn a room into an audience.

It was the thing he was best at.

“The safe will be opened at the house,” I said, keeping my voice level though my lip had begun to sting.

“In front of everyone.”

Leon laughed from down the aisle, still held between our cousins.