Part 1

They buried my husband at nine in the morning. By sunset, his mother struck my six-year-old son hard enough to leave red marks across his cheek.

The sound echoed through the marble foyer, sharp enough to freeze everything for a moment. Eli stumbled back, clutching his stuffed dinosaur.

“Grandma?”

Marjorie Vale stood over him in her black silk mourning dress, her face dry but tense with something that wasn’t grief. Behind her, my husband’s brother, Grant, leaned casually against the staircase, watching as if it were nothing serious.

“Take your things and leave this house,” Marjorie said coldly, pointing first at me, then at my child. “My son is gone. I’m done pretending you belong here.”

I held Eli close against my coat, trying to steady both of us. Just hours earlier, I had stood beside Daniel’s coffin and promised him I would protect our son.

Now his family was pushing us out of the home he built.

Grant gave a careless smile. “Come on, Lena. Don’t make this bigger than it is. Mom’s just tired.”

“Tired?” I said quietly. “She hurt my child.”

“He was touching Daniel’s watch,” Marjorie snapped. “That watch belongs to this family.”

“It belonged to his father.”