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“Don’t yell at me Jasmine,” she says softly as if scolding a child. “You should know better.”

“I know. I know. I just…I need you to look at me. Please.”

When she does, her eyes are distant. Like she’s looking at me but not seeing anything in front of her. “Oh, my daughter.”

“Mom.” My tongue feels heavy as I force the words out. “Mom, I need you to tell me what happened last night.”

“Last night?” Her head tilts and she frowns briefly. “Last night…”

“Yes. Last night. What…What happened to Dad? Can you tell me? Can you tell me what happened to him?”

She screws up her eyes and shakes her head. When they open, tears shine in the corners of her eyes and she smiles a watery smile. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s all going to be okay now.”

“Mom, what happened?” My frustration grows. Why can’t she give me a straight answer? I need her to tell me the truth. “Were you attacked? Was it self-defense? I saw the logs. I saw you ordered all the guards away last night. You even fired a bunch. What happened? Please Mom, please tell me.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty head, Jasmine.” She smiles suddenly and turns her attention back outside. “I was just trying to save you. That’s all I ever try to do.”

“Mom, what are you—” A knock at the door interrupts me. My head drops low and I close my eyes, willing down the overwhelming surge of agony that rises in my chest like heartburn.

I needanswers.

“Ma’am?” A guard pops his head around the door. “The doctor is here to see Mrs. Falzone.”

“Let him in,” I sigh, standing. As the doctor walks in with a polite smile, I wave him toward my mother. “She’s all yours, Doc.”

I have to leave the room while the doctor tends to my mother because her lack of response to him brings a growing sense of dread. If something doesn’t snap her out of this, I’ll never get answers.

Since my mother is a closed book, I only have a few options left. The CCTV around the estate only shows the guards leaving, as well as an argument my parents had in my father’s study, but they appear to make up amicably and retire to bed around the usual time. There are no cameras in the bedroom, so I have nothing to go on. Whatever happened in there is locked in the floaty mind of my mother.

So I return to the bedroom.

Not a single thing is out of place. The cleaners did an excellent job at wiping up the blood and removing all evidence, but I can still smell it. A coppery tang that hangs in the air like the stink of greased metal.

In the silence of my parents’ bedroom, the tears come. Grief swells up like a balloon inside me, taking up so much space that I can’t breathe. Tears fill my eyes but they don’t fall, a sob rises in my throat but for some reason, I can’t let it escape. It stays trapped inside me along with all the other pressure until everything throbs like a bruise. I clutch at my stomach as images of last night flicker in my mind—my father’s corpse, the knife in my mother’s hand, the dark empty house.

Everything had been going perfectly until I came home.

I wish I never did.

The sob still doesn’t come, and somehow I’m able to rein it in and grapple back in control of my upset. I swallow hard, shoving everything down into the dark depths of my guts and finally take a breath.

I need answers.

My parents’ room, once immaculate, grows to look like a bomb has hit it as I tear through every cupboard, drawer, and loose floorboard that I can find in my search for answers. Fuck knows what I’m looking for but there has to be something. A clue or a hint as to what happened here and why.

Why my father is dead.

Why my mother is broken.

Why my world is shattered.

That answer comes in a small mobile phone hidden behind a fake back panel in the drawer of my mother’s dressing table, tucked away behind old bottles of perfume and hand cream.

It’s a simple phone that turns on at the push of a button, but the passcode on the screen gives me pause. Why does she have a phone hidden away here?

What the fuck is going on?

Cracking her passcode isn’t hard since my predictable mother put her own birthday. The phone itself is blank other than a single string of text messages from a number with no name. She didn’t save it in the address book.