Chapter 1

On a stormy night, an intruder broke into the estate and severed my husband's neck.

I didn't call the police. Instead, I grabbed the bleach and scrubbed away every trace the killer left behind.

The next morning, my mother-in-law dug her nails into my arm. "Tell them! Who murdered my son?!"

"Lady Cordelia, if you saw anything, now is the time to speak." The police captain stepped closer, his voice hard.

I met his gaze without blinking. "The thunder was loud last night. I took my sleeping pills and heard absolutely nothing."

——

A scream tore through the morning quiet at dawn.

I opened my bedroom door. Winifred, the head maid, was on the floor outside the study.

She couldn't speak. Her face was chalk-white. She just pointed a shaking finger at the open door, gasping for air.

My mother-in-law, Rowena, shoved past me in the hallway.

She stepped into the study and let out a guttural howl.

"No... no! Alistair!"

She dropped straight into the blood pool. She crawled frantically toward him.

"Where is the doctor?!" Rowena shrieked, glaring wildly at the empty hallway. "Get help! We can still save him!"

She pressed her hands against his severed neck. Blood covered her gold rings.

Her trembling fingers pushed at the gaping flesh, desperately trying to reattach his head to his shoulders.

Winifred scrambled in, sobbing as she grabbed the old woman's arms. "Madam, please... Madam, he's..."

"Don't touch me! I just need to put it back! I can fix it!" Rowena fought the maid off.

She collapsed, burying her face into Alistair’s blood-soaked chest.

Thirty minutes later, the estate buzzed with police uniforms.

Captain Vance stood carefully at the edge of the blood pool.

He glanced first at the decapitated corpse, then stared at me.

"The killer came through the terrace!" Rowena grabbed my arm.

"You sleep right next door! He was slaughtered twenty feet away! How did you not hear him?!"

My daughter, Arabella, sprinted in from the hallway.

She took one look at Alistair’s severed neck and gagged.

She crawled toward me and grabbed the hem of my robe.

"Mom!" Arabella sobbed, "Tell the police who did this!"

I pulled my arm away from Rowena's grip. I stared down at the bleeding crescent marks her nails left on my wrist.

"Lady Cordelia," Captain Vance stepped directly in front of me, cutting off the two crying women. "Shielding a murderer makes you an accessory. If you saw the intruder, speak up."

"The thunder was loud," I said coldly.

"A man gets decapitated, and you just sleep through it?"

"I took two sleeping pills." I met his stare without blinking. "Am I under arrest for a heavy sleep, Captain?"

His jaw tightened.

He didn't arrest me that day. But over the next few weeks, Vance dragged me into the interrogation room four separate times.

He slapped the crime scene photos onto the scratched metal table.

"No footprints," Vance leaned over the desk. "No stray fibers. No mud from the storm. The killer used bleach. Gallons of it."

"Someone wiped that room spotless, Cordelia." He stared at me,

"Charge me," I said, looking up at him. "Or let me go."

He couldn't. He didn't have a single piece of evidence.

The case went cold.

We buried Alistair on a Thursday.

The rain at the cemetery felt exactly like the night he died.

Black umbrellas packed the wet grass as the entire local nobility surrounded the grave.

Wet dirt hit the casket.

Rowena screamed. Her knees buckled. Winifred caught her, struggling to hold the old woman's weight.

She swallowed hard, her eyes darting nervously toward me.

I stood at the head of the grave in a black veil.

Seraphina, my husband's dear sister, shoved her way to the front of the mourners.

She marched straight up to me and hurled a massive bouquet of white roses directly into my face.

Thorns slashed across my cheek.

The crying in the cemetery stopped instantly. Every eye locked on us.

"You bitch," Seraphina said.

I didn't flinch, ignoring the warm blood trickling down my jaw.

"I saw you," she raised her voice.

Near the cemetery gates, Captain Vance stopped walking. He slowly turned his head toward us.

"When I got up for water that morning, you were walking down the hall. You had a wash basin in your hands."

She pointed a finger directly at my face.

"You weren't asleep." She leaned in. "What are you hiding, Cordelia?"

"Who the hell were you protecting while my brother bled out on your rug?"