PROLOGUE
“THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING.”
Gabrielle Dupré frowned as she perched on the edge of a hard, black plastic chair. The room was small with gray walls. Outside the little room, there was the buzz of voices and phones ringing. But inside the room, a tense silence hung in the air like a dense fog. This was a place she’d never been in her life—a police station. How had things spiraled so far out of control? Her head pounded and her stomach churned.
After being here for more than two hours, the situation wasn’t looking good. Not good at all. She’d just played her final card and she’d been praying ever since that it would pay off.
“Don’t worry, daughter.” Her father stared at her from across a black nondescript table. “Everything will be all right.”
“All right?” She struggled not to shout in frustration. “Things are so far from all right.” With each word, her voice crept up in volume. Realizing that losing her cool right now would not help their cause, she paused and swallowed hard. “Father, do you know how much trouble you’re in?”
“Gaby, don’t you understand? If I got word out about that monster, then it was worth it.” His voice was filled with conviction. “Sometimes a man has to do what he has to do.”
“And sometimes he needs to think before he acts,” she said in a heated whisper. Anger pulsed through her veins, but it wasn’t her father that she was upset with—it was herself.
Her father reached out and patted her hand. “You’ll see. This will all work out.”
She blamed herself for not being there to reason with her father. And to stop him from acting rashly. For the past six months, she’d been working two jobs to pay their outstanding bills but she was still losing financial ground. Things were so bad she was considering taking on a third job. With her father’s health declining and him now in a wheelchair, it was up to her to make ends meet.
And through it all, she’d made sure to be there for her father every single day. He had been grieving ever since her aunt’s deadly car accident almost four months ago. And it didn’t help that the police had failed to release the truth about the accident. Although, that didn’t stop the gossip sites from pointing fingers, including the magazine she’d recently started doing an admin job for, QTR. By way of some unnamed source, they were accusing an award-winning movie star, Deacon Santoro, of being at fault.
Gaby was still trying to figure out the how and why of her father’s actions. “So you’ve been sneaking off to Deacon Santoro’s estate all week?”
His gaze narrowed. “I wasn’t sneaking. I didn’t want to bother you so I took the bus.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “I thought you had a girlfriend that you weren’t ready to tell me about.
If I’d have known what you were up to, I would have stopped you.”
With her father’s elbows resting on the table, he leaned toward her. His bloodshot eyes pleaded with her. “Don’t you want the truth?”
“Of course I do. How could you question that? I loved her, too. She was like a second mother to me. But there are better ways to get to the truth. You shouldn’t have staged a loud, disruptive protest in front of the man’s house and accosted his staff.”
Her father expelled a heavy sigh as he leaned back in his wheelchair. “Nothing else has worked. I’ve made phone call after phone call to the authorities. All I get is the runaround. They keep saying the accident report will be released as soon as the investigation has been completed.”
Gaby couldn’t believe what she was about to say, but someone had to reason with her father. With her mother and now her aunt gone, the responsibility landed squarely on Gabrielle’s straining shoulders.
“Do you even realize how much power Mr. Santoro wields?”
Her father’s bushy, gray eyebrows drew together. “Why do you think I went there? The police aren’t helping us get the truth because he bought them off.”