My husband slammed my head into the bathroom mirror until it cracked — furious that I’d asked where his paycheck went. I slid to the floor, dizzy and bleeding.

His mother stepped in, checked her reflection in an unbroken shard, and said, “Clean this mess up.” His father handed him a beer. “Don’t let her stress you out, son.”

I reached into my pocket — not for a tissue, but for the silent panic button on the keychain my brother, a federal DEA agent, had given me for emergencies

Chapter 1 — The Shattered Reflection

The mirror fractured a fraction of a second before the blinding wave of pain registered.

My husband, Dean, still had his thick fingers tangled in the roots of my hair when I watched my own reflection splinter into a dozen jagged silver fragments.

The bathroom light caught the broken glass and threw it back at me, a hundred small versions of my own frightened face.

“All I asked,” I breathed, my voice barely a tremor against the hum of the ventilation fan, “was where your paycheck went this week.”

His answer had been the mirror.

My knees buckled, dissolving beneath me like wet paper. I slid down the cold porcelain of the bathroom wall, the room tilting into a dizzying carousel of white tiles and dark shadows.

A sharp ringing filled my ears. I pressed my palm to my temple and felt a sudden, terrifying warmth dampening my skin.

Dean loomed over me, his chest heaving. The overhead light caught the gold of his wedding band, flashing with a brightness that felt less like a promise than a threat.

“You embarrass me in my own house,” he said.