Dan’s advice was to keep writing anything that comes into my head, and he’ll look it over the next time he’s here. He has to do this because of all the swearing and street slang that comes out of me. He says you won’t want to read all that and I can see he’s probably right.

It’s weird, me sitting here thinking about you and how our paths crossed. It shouldn’t have happened, but it’s no good saying that now because it did, and in our different ways we’re both paying the price. It’s a high one for me, I’m coming to terms with that, but for you . . . I don’t know how you’re going to live with what happened to you.

Chapter One

Marcus Huxley-Browne looked up from the warning call he’d just received on his mobile phone. His handsome face was taut, pale, showing none of its usual boredom or arrogance—or the self-satisfaction that came from having so much. He’d been born into an established family; he had all the right contacts and was as famed for his City successes as he was for the celebrations he threw when deals came off.

“They’re coming for me,” he muttered, the paleness of his skin turning to gray. He wasn’t looking at his wife, maybe he wasn’t even speaking to her.

“Who?” she asked, unnerved by the fear in his deep gray eyes.

He stared at her, seeing her past the commotion in his head. “You know nothing,” he instructed her tightly. “You’ve seen nothing. You’ve heard nothing. Have you got that?” His fists clenched, and she wondered if he was going to hit her, blame her, or something worse.

Who was coming?

She knew better than to ask a second time and stepped aside as he headed out of the room, across the hall, and into his study.

“Come here!” he shouted.

Obediently she hastened after him and stopped on the threshold of the room she was rarely invited into. He was standing behind his desk, a Huxley-Browne heirloom, one of many that cluttered the house with stately gloom. He looked haunted now, agitated—hunted—as if not knowing where to turn or what to do. Had things been different, she might have felt sorry for him.

“You don’t speak to anyone,” he told her gruffly.

She nodded. She’d had this instruction before, but usually he didn’t take any chances; he’d whisk her upstairs and lock her in one of the top-floor rooms.

She used to fight it, but she’d learned not to.

She often heard things from up there, but she never saw the comings and goings outside—cars pulling up, people entering or leaving the house—the windows were too high. However, voices carried even if she couldn’t make out who they belonged to, or what was being said.