Chapter 1
“This collar suits you. Wear it for the rest of your life.”
I dropped it onto Marcus’s chest.
The tiny bell gave one soft metallic sound.
Isabella immediately buried her face against my shoulder.
That reaction mattered more than Marcus coughing beneath the collapsed silver service pieces or Victoria pushing walking canes away from her dress.
My daughter was afraid of the sound.
I looked down at the collar again.
“How many times?”
Nobody answered.
I turned toward Isabella.
Her cheek was pressed against my jacket. Her small hands were tangled in my lapels.
“Bella.”
She lifted her face.
“How many times did they put this on you?”
Her eyes moved toward Victoria.
That was enough to make my aunt speak.
“She is three. She doesn’t understand what you’re asking.”
I looked at her.
“She understood ‘pets stay out of the party.’”
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
Marcus started rising.
“It was discipline.”
There it was.
Not joke anymore.
Discipline.
I carried Isabella toward one of my bodyguards and stopped when she tightened her arms around my neck.
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“Don’t leave.”
I did not.
Instead I held her and walked back toward the concealed panel.
There were scratches low on the inside wall.
Child height.
A folded blanket.
A plastic cup.
And, on a narrow shelf, three crackers wrapped in a napkin.
My breathing changed.
This was not somewhere they had put her for five minutes during tonight’s party.
It had been prepared.
Isabella pointed toward the darkness.
“Aunt Victoria says I eat there if I ring too much.”
I looked at the bell around the collar in my hand.
“What does that mean?”
Her lip trembled.
“When I talk at meetings.”
The room fell silent.
May you like
My daughter had not been hidden because she disrupted one party.
She had been trained to disappear whenever adults decided her voice was inconvenient.
