Crouching low to the floor, I swing upward as Donovan comes through the doorway, but he easily sidesteps the blow as if he knew exactly what I was going to do. The glass slices impotently through the air, its edges biting into my palm.

“What are you trying to do, Sam?” Donovan asks.

“Stay back,” I tell him, holding up the shard in one hand while holding Julian precariously to my chest with the other, casting about for an escape route. Isn’t there a small trapdoor somewhere in here that should take me into the hidden hallway and back out to the drawing room? But I search the walls, finding nothing.

“You’re out of your damned mind. Now give me my son.”

I back away from him, cornered; then, knocking aside the tall mirror so that it falls with a crash, momentarily separating us, I find the opening there, a low dark doorway, and I duck inside.

I feel my way through the blind dark and stumble instead into the dining room, which is not where I thought I would be, which has never held an entrance into the hidden hallway, and I am so shocked and lost that my eyes prickle with tears.

Then Donovan is there, grabbing me from behind, his hands yanking roughly at my clothes, twisting me around to face him—and as I do, I slice the air with the shard. This time it slashes his face, and he spins around, catching himself, while I gape, frozen. The arm holding Julian is growing tired as he seems to get heavier and heavier, and I have to drop the shard in order to hold him with both arms. A searing, bloody line marks my palm.

Donovan straightens and snarls at me, blood on his teeth. The glass sliced through his nose and lips, and his forehead wound has split open again and weeps down his face.

“You going to finish the job this time?” he asks, spitting blood on the floor. “Didn’t manage to take me down last time, so you’re trying again? You fucking women. You think everything belongs to you.”

I back away from him. “Don, stop. You’re out of control.”

“I am the only one here in control!” he bursts out.

“What if I told you that you’re going to turn your son into a killer?” At this, Don freezes, frowning at me. Julian mewls against my neck, his breath warm. “The way you’re behaving—the anger, the violence. Don’t you think it will rub off on him?”

Dark bruises have begun to bloom across Don’s glowering face, as if the shadows are reaching out to claim him. “Bullshit,” he says, his voice pitched low. He kicks the shard of glass, which shrieks across the floor away from us. Then he pulls from the waistband of his pants the crowbar. Seeing the surprise in my eyes, he says, “I thought I’d hang on to this.” Turning it over, feeling it in his hand, he gives me a leisurely, knowing grin. “It’s what you used to break the mirrors, isn’t it? To try to frame me?”