Cold air slaps my face the moment I step through the glass doors.
The ballroom noise dulls to a muffled roar behind me—phones chiming, cutlery clinking, the band limping through some jazz standard no one hears. Out here, the wind from the Long Island Sound carries salt and woodsmoke and a faint chemical sting I’ve come to associate with Harbor Glen Memorial up on the hill. Even on gala night, the hospital’s smell reaches down the peninsula, tagging the Mercers’ parties with disinfectant like a ghost.
“Keep walking,” Evelyn says beside me.
Her hand clamps around my bare arm, just above the elbow. Her nails bite through my skin, a human tourniquet.
The upper balcony stretches wide and elegant—stone underfoot, waist-high railing facing the water, Mercer crest lanterns throwing warm light on another display of tasteful wealth. Below, a lower terrace and the lawn spill toward the cliff’s edge, dotted with guests who didn’t want the crush inside. Beyond that, the harbor curves around, boats strung with lights gliding along the narrow peninsula in the Light the Harbor parade, everyone watching who rides on which yacht.
I register all of that in one fast sweep, then my attention narrows to the pressure in Evelyn’s fingers.
“You’re hurting me,” I say.
“Good,” she replies, voice soft and lethal. “Maybe you’ll remember the feeling next time you think about tearing down something you don’t understand.”
“I understand enough,” I say. “I understand the trust. The server deletions. Riley’s DNA. The adoption files. That article didn’t come out of nowhere.”
She swivels, pinning me between her and the railing.
The balcony stones hold the day’s chill. Small icy grains bite through the thin soles of my heels where they hit a seam. The railing presses against the backs of my thighs, cold metal branded with the Mercer crest in repeating abstract waves, their stylized curves echoing the water below.
“You understand nothing,” she hisses.
Her breath smells like champagne and mint and the faint tang of nerves she would never admit she owns.
“You think this town survives without us?” she says. “You think Harbor Glen Memorial runs on good intentions and bake sales? Those donor walls you and your little journalist friend keep flashing photos of—those names feed entire wards.”
“And those wards hid stolen children,” I say.
Her fingers dig deeper.
“I saved children,” she snaps. “Do you hear me? I gave them lives they would never have had.”
“You stole lives,” I say.
My voice scrapes up from somewhere low, raw.
“You told parents their babies died,” I add. “You turned grief into paperwork so your friends could have prettier stories.”
The wind curls around us, lifting the edge of her emerald gown and the hair at the nape of my neck. Down below, a cheer rises for a particularly gaudy yacht sliding past, its top deck lined with people in furs and glitter, a brass band blaring. Every year, the parade doubles as a social census—who’s invited aboard, whose name glows on which hull, whose absence gets whispered about in the coffee shop the next morning.
Tonight, the people on those decks are looking up at the estate instead.
Evelyn’s eyes glint in the lantern light.
“You’re a girl from nowhere,” she says quietly. “A charity case my son dragged home because he wanted to feel righteous. I made room for you at my table, and this is how you repay me? By collaborating with—”
She cuts herself off, lips curling around the last word.
“With your husband’s sister?” I ask. “With the child your trust paid to keep invisible?”
I lean forward into her space, the railing digging harder into my legs.
“I used to think you wanted me here because you loved Daniel,” I say. “Now I think you wanted another person under your roof whose story you could rewrite.”
Her face blanks for a heartbeat, then sharpens.
“You should never have come back after you ran away,” she says. “I gave you an exit. I gave you money. I was willing to let you keep your little life in exchange for your silence.”
“I know,” I say. “You counted on me choosing safety over truth.”
She laughs, a short, shocked sound.
“Truth,” she repeats. “Do you have any idea how childish you sound? There is no ‘truth’ that survives once lawyers and headlines get involved. There is only who controls the narrative.”
“You’re losing control,” I say.
The words leave a taste like iron in my mouth.
I feel rather than see the movement at the corner of my vision—figures inside the ballroom turning toward the glass, phones lifted. Behind Evelyn’s shoulder, I catch a flash of Riley’s midnight-blue gown through the doors, Daniel’s familiar shape in profile, both of them moving.
“You have no idea what you’ve invited onto this balcony,” Evelyn says, voice dropping lower. “Police. Regulators. Reporters who do not care if the hospital loses funding. Children in that NICU will die while you chase your tidy moral victory. And when that happens, they will put your name on those obituaries.”
“Those deaths would be on you,” I say. “On the people who built a system that collapses when anyone looks at it straight.”
Her eyes narrow.
“You’re hysterical,” she says.
The word lands like a slap.
“There it is,” I say. “The therapist’s notes. The staged theft. The staircase runner. That patch of ice you warned me about after my car skidded on the back road out of town.”
I lift my free hand and tap her knuckles where they bite into my arm.
“And now this,” I add. “Another private conversation near a drop.”
For a fraction of a second, the muscles in her jaw tense.
“I did not touch your car,” she says.
Her voice turns colder, not weaker.
“I do not loosen carpets,” she goes on. “I do not ‘stage’ accidents. I manage outcomes. That is very different.”
“You manage bodies,” I say.
“You give me far too much credit,” she replies.
The railing behind me shudders.
The sensation is small at first—just a tremor through the metal, a tiny shift in the bar pressed against my thighs. I freeze, every nerve suddenly tuned to the contact point. The wind roars louder in my ears. For one disorienting second, I think the Sound itself moved closer.
Then the entire section of railing jerks outward.
There’s a cracking sound, sharp and metallic, followed by a deep groan from the stone. The Mercer crest lantern nearest us rattles on its chain, light swinging wildly. My heels slide on the cold flagstone, the thin straps offering no traction. The world tilts toward the black water below.
“Hannah,” Evelyn gasps.
She grabs for me reflexively, both hands now clamping my arms, her weight slamming into mine. The railing lurches again under the double load, and the stone lip at its base crumbles in a spray of grit.
For one suspended heartbeat, my upper body hangs past the line of safety, the harbor filling my vision—the parade lights smearing into bright threads, boats bobbing on ink. I smell salt and engine exhaust and the faint sweetness of mulled wine drifting up from the lawn. The drop yawns beneath my toes.
I make a guttural sound I don’t recognize as English and hook my fingers around the top bar.
The metal jerks in my grip.
Bolts shear off with a series of pinging snaps, flying past into the night. One grazes my cheek, hot and bright.
Evelyn screams.
The railing gives.
We pitch forward together.
My stomach slams into the top bar, driving the breath out of me. For a fraction of a second I hover horizontal over the void, my weight levering the entire panel outward, the stone lip breaking away beneath it. Evelyn’s momentum carries her farther; her chest hits the metal, then her hips, her shoes scraping, and then nothing under her lower body. She slides.
The panel tears free of the wall.
“HANNAH!” Daniel’s voice rips through the wind.
Fingers clamp around the back of my gown, yanking so hard my collarbone burns. Another hand catches the waistband, hauling back against gravity. Fabric cuts into my ribs. The railing panel drops out from under my chest, clanging against the stone once before it spins away into darkness.
I sag backward, shoulders slamming into a solid chest.
Evelyn does not.
Her hands flail, catching the very edge of the remaining stone. She hangs there, emerald dress pouring over the void, feet kicking above the drop. A raw, animal sound rips out of her throat, stripped of charm, of spin, of anything but fear.
My knees buckle.
“I’ve got you,” Daniel gasps into my hair, arms banded around my torso.
His heart thunders against my back.
“Hannah, I’ve got you.”
Another presence drops beside me, gripping my wrist.
“Breathe,” Riley says. Her voice shakes, but her grip doesn’t. “You’re on the floor. You’re okay. Stay with me.”
I realize I’m half sitting, half kneeling on the flagstones, shoes twisted, legs scraped, Daniel’s arms still around my shoulders and Riley’s hand an anchor at my side. The broken edge of the balcony gapes inches away, a fresh wound in the estate. Torn metal spears up from the stone, where bolts once lived.
“Help!” someone shouts from below. “They’re over the edge!”
“Mrs. Mercer!” another voice cries. “Hold on!”
Evelyn dangles in my peripheral vision, fingers straining white on the stone lip.
Security bursts through the balcony doors, dark suits and earpieces and polished shoes skidding on the cold floor. Two guards drop flat, bellies to the stone, and slide forward to the edge, grabbing for her wrists.
“Don’t let go,” one orders.
“Don’t you dare,” the other adds through clenched teeth.
Their fingers close around her arms inches from the diamonds glittering at her cuffs.
Below, the courtyard has turned into an amphitheater of horror. Guests crane their necks, faces tipped upward under the chandelier glow spilling from the ballroom. Phones point up, tiny red recording dots blinking in the dark. The Mercer estate, perched above the law, now sits framed in a hundred lenses.
A woman on the lower terrace screams.
“The railing just popped off!” she yells to no one in particular. “It just—she and Hannah—”
Her voice breaks.
“Get maintenance up here!” someone in a headset shouts. “Get paramedics!”
Riley’s hand leaves my wrist long enough to grab her phone from her clutch.
“I’m calling 911 myself,” she says. “I already have them on speed dial for you people.”
Daniel huffs out a strangled laugh that’s half sob, then presses his forehead briefly to mine.
“Don’t move,” he says. “Please, don’t move.”
I ignore him and crawl closer to the broken edge on my hands and knees.
“Hannah,” Riley warns.
I stay just far enough back that my weight rests on solid stone.
Up close, the damage looks worse. The mounting bracket for the railing yawns open, hollow. A few bolts remain lodged in the stone, twisted and black at the tips like they were deliberately filed down. Others lie scattered on the flagstones, short, shiny, too small for the holes they’re supposed to secure.
“Those aren’t standard,” one of the guards grunts, straining to keep hold of Evelyn. “Who the hell signed off on that hardware?”
The second guard risks a glance at the scattered bolts.
“These were cut,” he mutters.
The words carry farther than he thinks.
A murmur ripples from the doorway where staff cluster, their white shirts stark in the lantern light. One of the older housemen crosses himself. A young facilities tech in a foundation polo stares at the damaged bracket like his world has tipped.
“We just inspected this level last month,” he says weakly. “Everything passed. I swear to God, everything passed.”
My skin prickles.
Carpets loosened. Guardrails scraped. Black ice on deserted side roads. Always a plausible explanation, always a private space Evelyn controlled.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the last planned “accident” rips itself wide open in front of donors and staff and phones and security and the harbor.
“Pull!” a guard barks.
They haul back in unison, muscles corded. Evelyn’s body rises a few inches, dress taut, then drops again when she panics and kicks. Her eyes lock with mine, wide and wild.
“Help me,” she gasps.
The words scrape out of her mouth hoarse, stripped of command.
For a flash I see Lydia’s memorial tree on the cliffs, the way Evelyn tightened her grip on my arm when I stepped too close to the edge. I see the staircase runner sliding under my feet, the guardrail that stopped my car from going over the embankment, the therapist’s pen scratching notes about my “perception issues.”
Love and harm, same hands.
I inch closer, extend my arm, and wrap my fingers around her forearm above the guards’.
Her skin feels cold and astonishingly fragile.
“I’ve got you,” I say.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I say it anyway.
Daniel adds his grip over mine, Riley bracing his shoulder with both hands, creating a human chain.
On the lawn, the band has stopped playing. The only sounds are the wind, the soft lap of water against the cliff, and the groans and curses of the men hauling Evelyn upward. Somewhere below, sirens start to wail, faint but growing, threading through Harbor Glen’s manicured center and up the back roads locals use when they want to bypass ceremony.
“On three,” the lead guard pants. “One—two—three!”
We all pull.
Evelyn’s torso clears the edge. Her hips scrape the stone; fabric tears. With one last coordinated heave, we drag her onto the balcony. She sprawls on the flagstones, clutching her chest, gasping, hair wild, diamonds crooked.
For once, she looks exactly like what she is: a human body that came inches from breaking on the rocks.
The crowd on the lawn erupts in relieved, stunned noise—applause, shouts, overlapping instructions. Phones track every movement.
“No one touches this area,” the facilities tech says, voice suddenly steady. “We need to secure it. And we need photos. Detailed photos.”
His eyes lift to mine, then to Daniel’s.
“This isn’t wear and tear,” he says. “This is tampering.”
Riley meets my gaze over Evelyn’s heaving shoulders.
Her eyes shine, not with triumph, not exactly. With recognition.
“They can’t write this one off,” she says under her breath. “Not with an article live and bolts like that.”
Not with donors watching the hospital’s golden matriarch nearly pitch off her own balcony.
Not with a town that knows where every name sits on every donor wall suddenly seeing how easily the stone beneath those names crumbles.
Evelyn pushes herself up on trembling arms.
For a moment, I think she’ll thank us.
“Get me inside,” she says instead, voice raw but already reaching for control. “Before the photographers get the angle they want.”
Security moves to help her.
Behind them, paramedics spill onto the balcony, their uniforms smelling of antiseptic and cold night air. One of them drops to his knees beside me, shining a small light into my eyes. Another asks Daniel rapid-fire questions about my fall, my head, my spine.
I answer automatically, but my attention stays on the broken stone lip.
On the twisted bolts.
On the dark drop beyond.
On the path from this balcony to the police and inspectors and lawyers waiting in the next chapter.
“Ma’am?” the paramedic says.
“Yes,” I answer.
“You sure you didn’t black out?” he asks.
I hold his gaze.
“No,” I say. “I remember every second.”
I look back at the ruined railing, the torn metal like teeth marks in the estate.
“And for once,” I add, “I’m not the only one.”
Sirens swell louder as red and blue lights start to flicker against the glass doors, painting the ballroom in emergency colors.
The Mercer cliffside, built on curated stories and quiet erasures, has just lost a piece of itself in front of witnesses, and I brace for the questions that will hammer at every crack.