I ran.

I just ran.” Any normal mother in the suburbs of Rhode Island would have screamed. Any normal mother would have dialed 911, screaming for the police, demanding ambulances, detectives, restraining orders, and the slow, grinding wheels of the justice system.

But I knew exactly how those wheels turned—and how easily people like Beatrice greased them. A single frantic 911 call in the dark would get me a patrol car, a report, and a booking that a family lawyer would have quashed by breakfast.

Beatrice could post bail, hire fixers, and spin a story of a hysterical, unstable young bride before the sun was even up.

If I was going to bury these people, I wasn’t going to do it with a phone call to a dispatcher. I was going to do it with something airtight—so overwhelming that no amount of old blood or new lawyers could dig them out.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I merely pressed my thumb gently against Lily’s unbruised cheek, wiping away a smear of drying blood.

My own heartbeat, which had been racing at a frantic tempo, suddenly slowed. It dropped into a glacial, predatory rhythm I hadn’t felt in nearly two decades.