Chapter 1 - The Woman in My Hot SpringThe Tremor Wasn't in My Hand
“What did you say?”
My voice came out quieter than I intended.
The woman stood barefoot on the heated stone, wrapped in my charcoal robe. Steam curled around her legs. Her dark-blond hair was still damp at the ends, and her face had lost every trace of the sleepy confusion she had shown moments earlier.
She looked at my right hand.
Not my face.
Not the expensive watch around my wrist.
My hand.
More precisely, the fingers I had unconsciously closed around my wrist to stop them from shaking.
“That tremor,” she repeated. “It isn’t coming from your hand.”
Vince stepped forward.
“Sir—”
I raised my palm.
He stopped.
The woman swallowed.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No.”
I kept watching her.
“You should explain.”
She glanced at Vince, then at the cameras mounted beneath the pavilion roof.
Something changed in her expression.
Fear.
Not ordinary fear.
Recognition.
“You have cameras here?”
“Everywhere.”
“Then someone already knows I’m here.”
Vince's jaw tightened.
“That's impossible. The pavilion cameras have been offline for maintenance.”
The woman stared at him.
“Since when?”
“Two days.”
She looked at me again.
“How convenient.”
The word hung between us.
I felt my shoulder begin to ache.
Fourteen months ago, that shoulder had been crushed during the accident that killed Thomas.
The doctors had called it a complicated fracture.
I called it the moment my life split in half.
Thomas had died instantly.
I had survived.
Everyone expected that survival to look like gratitude.
Instead, it looked like this.
A trembling hand.
A damaged shoulder.
A resort empire I didn't trust.
And a family that kept smiling at me as if I were a wounded animal waiting to be replaced.
I studied the woman in front of me.
“Your name.”
“Mara Vale.”
“Real name?”
Her lips parted.
For half a second, she almost smiled.
“That's my real name.”
“Then why did you lie about winning a resort stay in a union raffle?”
Her face went pale.
Vince looked at me.
“You checked already?”
“I had three people verify it.”
I hadn't even known whether she had stolen something yet.
But lying was a language I had learned to recognize.
Mara wrapped my robe tighter around herself.
“The raffle was real.”
“Not your invitation.”
Silence.
“Who sent you?”
“No one.”
“Wrong answer.”
She looked toward the gate.
Two security guards stood outside the courtyard.
No exit.
No easy way out.
And suddenly she looked trapped.
I saw her glance at the guards.
Then at Vince.
Then back at me.
“I didn't come here to hurt you.”
“I didn't ask whether you came to hurt me.”
She exhaled slowly.
“I came because your brother told me to.”
The world seemed to shrink.
My shoulder stopped hurting.
My hand stopped trembling.
Even the steam seemed to disappear.
I stepped closer.
“My brother has been dead for fourteen months.”
“I know.”
“Then choose your next words carefully.”
“I've been trying to.”
She reached into the pocket of the clothes Ruth had left for her.
Vince immediately drew his weapon.
Mara froze.
“Easy,” I said.
She slowly pulled out something wrapped in a plastic bag.
A brass key.
Old.
Heavy.
Stamped with a small pine tree.
My chest tightened.
I knew that symbol.
Every piece of property Thomas owned carried the same pine insignia.
Except this key belonged to something I had never seen.
“What is it?” I asked.
Mara looked directly at me.
“Your brother gave it to a dying man.”
My throat tightened.
“Who?”
“I don't know his real name.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
She looked almost exhausted.
“I expect you to remember the night Thomas died.”
The room inside my head went cold.
I remembered the rain.
The black SUV.
The guard who said Thomas had left alone.
The crash.
The hospital.
The funeral.
The endless parade of people telling me how strong I was.
Mara stepped closer.
“He wasn't alone when he died.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“He called me six hours before the crash.”
Vince's face changed.
Mara noticed.
“You know something too, don't you?”
Vince said nothing.
I turned to him.
“Vince.”
“Sir, I—”
Mara suddenly grabbed my sleeve.
Her fingers were cold.
“Your brother knew someone wanted him dead.”
I looked down at her bruised wrist.
“What happened to you?”
She hesitated.
Then she whispered:
“The same people who killed your brother.”
Before I could answer, every light around the pavilion went out.
Blackness swallowed the courtyard.
A second later, one of the security alarms screamed.
Vince shouted.
“DOWN!”
A gunshot cracked through the night.
Mara dropped to the ground.
I pulled her behind the stone wall.
Another shot shattered the glass lantern above us.
Then silence.
I waited.
Nothing.
Vince signaled toward the eastern trees.
Two guards ran.
I looked at Mara.
She was staring at me.
There was blood on her hand.
I grabbed her wrist.
“You're hurt.”
She shook her head.
“Not mine.”
The blood was dripping from the brass key.
It had been clean seconds earlier.
I looked toward the body-shaped shadow near the garden gate.
One of my guards lay motionless.
And pinned to his chest was a folded piece of paper.
I opened it.
Three words had been written in black ink.
HE KNOWS ABOUT YOU.
May you like
For the first time in fourteen months, I wondered whether my brother's killer hadn't been looking for me at all.
Maybe he had been waiting for me to find the truth.
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