Chapter 1

"Why do you insist on touching that wall, Nadine?"

The voice of my husband, Rowan, drifted from the doorway, edged with a barely detectable tension.

I paused with the tape measure in my hands and turned to look at him.

Wearing a perfectly tailored dark-gray trench coat and holding a bag of Blue Mountain coffee beans from an artisanal roaster, he looked the very picture of the perfect partner.

But his eyes weren’t on my face. They were locked onto the soundproof wall in the basement behind me.

"Because the proportions are all off, Rowan," I explained.

"The load-bearing structure of this house is on the east side, yet this wall juts out an extra fifteen inches for no reason."

"It completely throws off the flow of the entire basement."

"I’m going to tear it down and put in a built-in wine cooler."

"I told you, absolutely not." Rowan set the coffee beans down on the workbench, strode over, and snatched the tape measure right out of my hands.

"That wall houses old heating pipes and the main electrical wiring."

"If you just start hacking away at it, we could be looking at thousands of dollars in repairs, or worse, start an electrical fire."

"I can get a professional contractor in here to assess it," I insisted, meeting his gaze.

"Nadine, listen to me." He sighed, reaching out to cup my face in his hands, his thumbs gently grazing my cheekbones.

His hands were freezing—so cold I had to fight the urge to flinch.

"I bought this house so you’d have a quiet place to work on your designs."

"That soundproof wall keeps out the street noise."

"Trust me. I’m an architect; I know what’s best for this house."

His tone was flawlessly gentle, yet an inexplicable chill washed over me.

Rowan was a control freak. I’d known that before we got married, but he usually had much more subtle ways of manipulating me into a compromise.

Right now, however, his protectiveness over this wall bordered on paranoia.

"Alright," I said, forcing a smile as I took a step back, slipping out of his grasp.

"You’re right. Maybe I’m just being too nitpicky."

"There you go, sweetheart." Rowan smiled, looking thoroughly satisfied, and leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead.

"I have to head up to Portland this afternoon to meet with a client. I won’t be back until tomorrow night."

"Will you be alright here by yourself?"

"Of course. I’m going to catch up on the interior decor plans for the second floor."

The moment Rowan’s car backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the street, my smile dropped.

I hurried back down to the basement and locked the door at the top of the stairs behind me.

Rowan was lying.

After a decade working as an interior designer, I could map out a house’s plumbing and wiring in my sleep.

In a 1920s home like this, there was absolutely no way the main electrical panel ran through that wall.

More importantly, the drywall seams were fresh. Six months old, tops. Which meant Rowan must have secretly hired someone to build it right before we moved in.

What exactly was he hiding? Or rather—what did he bury inside there?

Walking over to my toolbox, I grabbed a claw hammer and a flat pry bar.

My heart hammered wildly against my eardrums. With every swing of the tool, it felt like I was physically shattering the illusion of our perfect marriage.

The drywall was much flimsier than I expected.

Within minutes, I had punched a fist-sized hole near the baseboard.

No wiring. No heating pipes.

Just a hollow, pitch-black void—and a rush of cold air that carried a pungent scent: a mix of plaster dust and something sickeningly sweet and rotten.

I flicked on my phone’s flashlight and held it up to the breach.

The fiberglass insulation was torn and mangled. Wedged in the narrow gap between two wooden studs, something caught the light.

I grabbed a pair of needle-nose pliers and carefully pinched it out.

It was a woman’s white-gold ring.

The breath hitched in my throat.

The inside of the band was crusted with a dark, rust-colored stain. Dried blood.

I dug my thumbnail into the grime, scraping away a layer of the blood. Under the harsh glare of my flashlight, a line of incredibly fine, cursive engraving revealed itself:

'To M.V., Forever Yours. R.'

R.

Rowan?

A tremor started in my hands, violent and uncontrollable.

Rowan had sworn to me that before we met, he was a staunch bachelor. He claimed he had never bought a ring for another woman in his life.

So, who the hell was "M.V."?

And why was her bloody ring sealed inside the walls of my basement?