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“That’s unfortunate for you. Santino may look like an angel, but he fucks like a demon. You missed out. But he’s legally free now, in case you change your mind and leave that billionaire husband again.”

Vanessa served her another smile, but this one felt sharp. Her teeth were shards of glass about to cut her lips.

Antoinette coughed like she was about to choke on something. “You know what? I should go…”

Everything Vanessa had ever wanted to say to this woman was surging through her, that underwater volcano boiling, bubbling. About to blow. And blow it did.

“Go? Oh, please, not yet. You and I still need to chat about why you chose to keep calling your so-called best friend when he was my husband. Normal friends call during normal hours, sometimes once a day, maybe every few days. But you…you called all day, all night, every day whenever you needed a crutch. I asked him to ask you to stop, and you didn’t.

Three am? When he was with me on vacation? Like, seriously?”

“He was helping me. I didn’t have anyone else to turn to,” Antoinette said, her voice rising.

“The things he did to help you could have landed him in federal prison. Prison! Did you care about him when he put himself on the line to help you, and then you turned around and went right back to your man? You got Santino involved in your bullshit for absolutely nothing. And you’re telling me you’re his friend? His best friend?”

Finally, after Vanessa’s tirade, a spark of defiance lit in Antoinette’s eyes. “I didn’t come here to get a lecture from you.”

“Oh, but you thought you were going to walk in here and we wouldn’t have words about that disrespect and disregard for anyone but yourself? Baby, if so, you made a big fucking mistake coming back here at all.”

Vanessa’s burst of anger made Antoinette’s face tighten. The sweet act was gone, and they stood locked in a standoff, looking each other in the eye.

“Okay, yes, if it were me and someone was calling my husband like that now and asking him to do something dangerous, I’d feel differently about it.

And I’ll admit, we’d called ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend for so long that I was jealous when I realized he’d moved on and finally met someone. I’m not proud of myself for that.”

“Thanks for that, I guess,” Vanessa said flatly.

Antoinette served a look that was part pout, part smirk.

“If it makes any difference to you, all Tino could talk about whenever we spoke was you. When he helped me get to Aruba, he talked about you. He left as soon as he could because he was worried about you and how upset you’d been.

So, if that’s not enough to prove you were always the one he wanted, I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m sorry, okay? I’m truly —”

But Antoinette was cut off by another shrill laugh. Only it wasn’t Vanessa laughing.

It was Zoe, who’d appeared behind Vanessa. She must have gotten in through the sliding kitchen door to the patio. But how?

“Oh, don’t apologize to this bitch,” Zoe said in a breezy tone, walking into the room.

She gleaned the question on Vanessa’s face because she said carelessly, “I know your security code. Mom writes all the codes and passwords down in one place, even though you’re not supposed to.

Although I don’t know how much longer I get to call her mom, since you destroyed my marriage by bringing Bobby up to Montreal so he could cheat on me.

Anyway, I made a third set of keys. I come here sometimes when you’re at work. This place is so calming.”

She sighed and touched the freedom candle on the mantle with a fingertip. Her hair was in a ponytail but disheveled, off-kilter, like her T-shirt and hole-filled yoga pants.

“You…you come into my house?” Vanessa asked, the words uttered breathlessly. Antoinette’s eyes shifted between them. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Sanity’s subjective.” Zoe shrugged. “Anyway, I like to come in here and imagine what it must be like to be you. You, with your cute little meditation pillow and your Tibetan singing bowls. These stupid rocks.”

Demonstrating her disdain for Vanessa’s treasured gems, she knocked a bowlful off the mantle with a casual swipe. It broke on the hearth and the rocks scattered.

Did this bitch really just break her Waterford bowl? Shock was now warring with renewed rage.

“I like to have a nice cup of tea in one of your fancy imported home-shopping Japanese teacups and watch your favorite movies, even though I’m not really big on horror.

” Zoe made a face, signaling her distaste in Vanessa’s film choices.

“Sometimes, Bobby can’t finish me off. Well, a lot of times he can’t since we had Everly.

The only thing that does the job anymore is that little rose in your special drawer.

I skyrocket every time . Where did you get it?

Online? I’ve been dying to ask but then I’d have to explain…

” She gestured at the room and laughed shortly.

Vanessa fought the almost overwhelming urge to be sick. “Oh my God, please tell me you’re just saying that to fuck with me, please .”

Zoe rolled her eyes at her, as though she’d just asked a stupid question. “Of course, I’m fucking with you. You’re disgusting. I’m not trying to catch your slut germs.”

“What the fuck is happening here?” Antoinette asked, backing further into the far corner, staring wide-eyed at Zoe. “Who is this?”

“I’m her sister. Her sorta bestie, really.

Or at least we were, in the beginning. And then she got an attitude with me because she realized her boyfriend wanted me.

But I know who you are. Santino’s ex. Not as cute as I’d been picturing.

Anyway, I’m here a lot. And I see things.

” Zoe gave them a sly, almost coquettish look.

“For instance, I’ve seen Santino sitting outside in his cousin’s car, watching you.

He follows you to work, to the courthouse.

He acts like he’s some sort of mafia guy on the hunt, but he’s never spotted me following him even once. So dumb.”

“What?” Vanessa whispered.

Suddenly, the pages in Santino’s sketchbook fluttered open in her mind. He’d drawn her rose bushes, but she hadn’t planted them until after he’d moved out. He’d known about Scott before she’d told Dani…How had she not seen this?

“Uh-huh. I saw Scott too when he came around. I followed him when he left once. His place in Manhattan is gorgeous. A pre-war on Riverside Drive?” Zoe made the “ok” sign with her thumb and forefinger.

“I can’t believe you fucked that up, too.

That’s twice, Vanessa! How you could get two different rich, hot men wrapped around your finger and then fuck it up both times is…

its…well, it’s mindboggling.” She was still fingering the candle, passing her hand over it like an ancient wielding secret powers.

“Zoe, you have so much.” Vanessa was trembling when Zoe picked up the candle and wiggled it from side to side playfully with dark, flat eyes. A doll’s eyes. “You have Everly. Don’t do something that’ll keep you away from her. Put that down.”

Zoe looked between her and Antoinette, then at the living room, the clean white walls, the long, billowy curtains.

With a shrug, she said, “Okay.” Then tossed the candle down on the floor where it landed at the base of that curtain.

The flames took hold and whooshed up the cloth in mere seconds.

And seconds after that, seeing what she’d done, whatever accursed spell had possessed Zoe to drop that candle suddenly vaporized with the fabric.

“Oh my God,” she said, turning in panicked half circles from side to side. “Oh my God, your curtains. Your curtains …”

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

Before any of them could run or respond, there was a man standing in the living room now, also coming from the kitchen and dressed in black from head to toe. He was staring at the flaming curtain with his mouth open.

Vanessa froze, unable to believe what was happening. Three uninvited motherfuckers and a fire in her house?

This newcomer stared at the growing blaze, mesmerized, seeming to have forgotten the tire iron he carried in one hand. And in the other was another bottle of D’Alessio wine from her kitchen with a piece of cloth tucked into the neck.

It seems they weren’t the only two frozen with shock. Zoe and Antoinette remained in their spots, their eyes wildly swinging from the fire to the intruder, obviously trying to decide which threat was worse, just as Vanessa was.

“Is this your husband?” she asked Antoinette, who stared at the man and shook her head as she shrank back in fear.

“Who the fuck are you?” Zoe finally exclaimed over the crackling noise of the hungry flames licking up the curtain to the ceiling.

“Who the fuck are you ?” he shouted back. Scanning their faces, he focused on Vanessa with a triumphant sneer. “You were supposed to be here alone. Never mind.”

The thick-set, dark-haired man picked up the candle that was next to Belle’s picture and tossed it onto the couch while they gaped at him as if their feet were stuck to the floor.

He used the third candle on the coffee table to light the cloth of the bottle.

With full force, he threw it at the front door and another fire started.

The door was no longer an exit, but a barrier to safety.

Antoinette somehow overcame her paralysis and ran at the assailant. They grappled for a moment, looking like a bizarre mismatched couple between her light and sweet pink dress and his dark henchman uniform.

After she punched his face, like a gnat hitting an elephant, he snatched Antoinette by her hair and punched her back, hard, casting her in the other direction like tossing a ragdoll. Her head lolled to the side after that sickening blow, and she didn’t move.

Now he was blocking her way. It was either go through the fire that was inching closer, crackling hot and greedily waiting to devour her or go through him.

He grinned at her, looking like the spawn of Hell with his skin flame-painted a sickly reddish-orange.

Less frightening in appearance but even more deadly was the acrid, rising smoke, forcing useless coughs out of her tightening lungs.

Having lived with a firefighter, she knew she was supposed to drop to the floor and crawl, but that bastard would be on her in seconds if she did.

“That’s my sister. You can’t have her,” Zoe snarled.

To Vanessa’s shock, Zoe launched herself at the stranger like a tiny wildcat and tried to wrestle the tire iron out of his hand. He punched her, too, and pushed her down where Vanessa could no longer see her beyond the fiery couch.

He turned back to Vanessa and raised the tire iron, but Zoe wrapped her arms around his leg. Cursing, he turned and hit her with it across the back and her muffled cry was both pitiful and horrifying.

Vanessa shouted, “Leave her alone!” through a throat strangled with smoke.

It didn’t matter if she and Zoe hated each other. That was Everly’s mother. That baby couldn’t grow up knowing her aunt had let her mother die. There wasn’t enough petty left in her to bear the thought of that.

Vanessa jumped over the coffee table and into the asshole, launching the full force of her body into him before he could follow through on the next hit.

She sank her nails into his face and despite his sweat, they made purchase.

With a fierce cry, she raked downward, gouging hard, and ripping flesh as he howled.

“Ah, you bitch !” he swore.

He turned and his fist landed on her temple so hard it made her head whip back. The meaty sound of flesh against flesh was almost as awful as the flaring pain. Then he picked her up and threw her back into the corner near the window.

Slowly, painfully, she got to her feet. They squared off, him panting and wincing while he touched the bloody strips of his ruined cheek, her heaving and coughing from the agony radiating from her face and her back. Then he was coming for her with renewed and determined fury.

She was now trapped by fire on three sides.

He was blocking the only path left. Frantically, she searched for something, anything she could use to defend herself.

The only thing she saw in her little zone was a giant quartz stone on a decorative pedestal.

Snatching up the quartz, she struggled to raise it over her head.

It was enormous, not something designed to stroll around with.

Her back and shoulder muscles screamed at her, but she held it aloft, arms shaking, using every ounce of her strength.

“You picked the wrong day for this shit. Fuck you!” she shouted and when he lunged at her, she brought the jagged chunk down squarely on his skull.

The stone landed right where she’d aimed it, the blow of the heavy rock making him stagger backward. Now was her only chance to run past, but her attacker threw himself in her path and they both fell.

She landed on the hardwood with a crash that knocked whatever air was left in her lungs and smacked the daylights out of her head.

Woozy, in a state of shock, she felt his fingers scrabble to gain purchase on her leg, then her shorts, heaving himself on top of her. She twisted her head to look at him and through the smoke that clouded her eyes, she could discern that his head was bleeding freely from a huge gash.

The blood was pouring like warm water on her back and down her side. He might have been strong, might crush her with his weight, but he was dazed and hurting because of her hit.

Good. If that was the last thing she’d accomplish in this world, even if she couldn’t save herself or anyone else, she’d be satisfied with that.