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Yzak Milov. His name rips through me as my mother continues, her face impassive.

“Ava, your father was a brilliant obstetrician, who was banned from practicing medicine in this country. Angry at the system, he took matters into his own hands and did some unscrupulous things. It was all in our best interest.”

Some things? Our best interest? The article I read replays in my head. The unsanitary conditions. The rats. The illegal drugs. The deplorable infant disposal. My father was a murderer! A toxic cocktail of shock and horror bubbles up inside me. I fight back the urge to vomit.

“Mother, how could you?” Not tell me. Not stop him.Not leave him. Not turn him in. The should haves, would haves, could haves spin around in my brain like the balls in a bingo hopper. Only one pops out. “How could you have let him?”

My mother remains as stoic as a soldier, not a morsel of regret on her face.

“Ava, your father lived a double life. Do you honestly think we could have lived on the measly salary of Isaac Miller, government-employed scientist? He had bigger dreams, and so did I.”

“Mother, how could you not have told me that it was all a ruse and that my father was arrested? Tried for murder? Sentenced for life for all the horrific things he did? You’ve lied to me all these years…you told me he was dead. That he was killed in a terrible car accident.”

She even kept an urn of his ashes on her nightstand though I always suspected it was filled with her cigarette droppings.

My mother’s eyes narrow to slits. “You were just a young girl. I didn’t want you growing up knowing your father was a criminal. Confined in prison.”

The vague memory of his arrest comes back to me. It was the night before she told me my father had died in a car crash. A night much like tonight. Storming. Lightning and thunder, a heavy rain. I’d just woken up from one of my nightmares. Whirling red and blue lights infiltrated the gap between my bedroom curtains. I heard voices below, but I was too frightened to get out of bed. Too scared to go downstairs. Not knowing what was happening, I shoved my covers over my head.

Wishing I could do that now. Block it all out. Make this all go away.

I can’t.

My mother snivels. “I suppose I could have told you a nobler lie, like he trekked to Africa to take care of starving, sick children.”

The ruthless baby killer? The bitter irony of her words makes me feel sicker than I already feel. “I—I don’t understand.”

She looks me straight in the eye. “My dear Ava, I did it for us. He did it for us. We lived in a beautiful house. We went on beautiful vacations. We had beautiful things. He gave us everything. Yes, I looked the other way…in more ways than one.”

My eyes, shocked wide open, beg her to go on.

“He was having an affair with his nurse. She got pregnant…”

Where is she going with this?

“…on purpose. It was a trick. A means to an end. Smartly, she didn’t let him deliver the child. After the shrew gave birth, she threatened him. Said she had evidence. If he didn’t take the baby and give her an absurd amount of money, she was going to blow his lucrative practice apart…tell the authorities what was really going on in the basement of our house. About the sordid conditions and unreported infant deaths.” She pauses. “Believe me, I never wanted children, never wanted to care for one, but I had no choice. So, I agreed to adopt the child.”

“It was a baby girl, wasn’t it?” I can’t even bring myself to say the word Mother. It dies on my tongue. Her confession hits me like a sucker punch to my stomach. My blood freezes over until I’m numb. The years of abuse and neglect, coldness and indifference become crystal clear. She never wanted me. She resented me.

No wonder we look nothing alike.

She isn’t my real mother.

“Why did you agree?” I can barely speak.

Her expression grows wistful, her eyes distant. “I loved your father despite his transgressions. And he loved me.” She lifts her head proudly. “That’s what loving, loyal wives do.”

“That’s what loving, loyal wives do?” Marley snickers while I process my mother’s shocking words. Her face darkening, the tone of Marley’s voice turns to venom.

“Fuck you, Renata! You were his accomplice! You’re as responsible as he was for killing my sister and her baby. I remember how you sat in the courtroom day after day in that prim suit of yours, not showing one tiny ounce of emotion. Not shedding one single tear while my poor, hardworking mother couldn’t stop crying. My mother loved my sister. She worked hard so my sister could come here to be an actress. And I know she would have become a great one if she hadn’t met that monster Ned, who knocked her up and abandoned her.”

What?!I feel the breath inside my lungs freeze. Ned knew Marley’s sister? Impregnated her?

While I process this new shock of information, Marley’s voice grows softer. “I loved my sister too. Worshipped her. She was my everything. Twelve years older than me, she called me little Em. And told me I was going to be the best auntie ever and could become whatever I wanted if I put my mind to it.”

For a brief moment, she casts her eyes on the Baby Reborn doll I’m holding and then looks back up at me.

“One of my mother’s compassionate employers gave her that doll hoping it would heal her. It was no replacement for the loss of my sister and her baby. It only made her sadder, but instead of throwing it out, she gave it to me. I loved it and took it everywhere I went.”

She heaves a breath. “My mother got a settlement, but that wasn’t enough either. All the money in the world couldn’t bring back my sister or her baby. In case you don’t know, my mother had a breakdown, leaving me more or less an orphan at the age of six.”

I listen. Intently, silently. Despite her insanity, my heart aches inside my chest. She’s suffered so much.

She glowers at me. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up in the system? Shuffling from one loveless family to the next?”

I silently shake my head, though I know what it’s like to move from one place to the next and never feel worthy of my mother’s love.

Her gaze shifts to my mother. “And you, Renata?”

Her lips pinched together, my mother says nothing.

I can picture her younger self sitting emotionless in the courtroom as Marley’s face hardens with rage.

“Tell me, are you sorry for what you did?”

“I was exculpated.” Twitching her nose, she makes a dismissive face. “I did nothing!”

“That’s exactly it. You did nothing!” Marley seethes. “Renata, your husband is guilty of sins of commission. He killed my sister and her baby. And paid the price with a life sentence, though the sick bastard should have gotten the death penalty. You, on the other hand, committed something worse…sins of omission. Did nothing. And got away with it. For all I know, you were complicit. Maybe you were the one who disposed of the fetuses…threw them in the garbage like they were trash…just the way you were about to dispose of my doll.”

The sickening image of my mother bagging a bloody newborn and tossing it into the trash fills my mind. As much as I want to push it away, I can’t. A bitter rush of bile rises to my throat as Marley continues. Her voice is a hiss, vile and venomous.

“You despicable bitch! You don’t deserve to live!”

On my next pent-up breath, she pivots. And before I can blink, she fires the gun at my mother. The bang reverberates in my ears as the smell of gunpowder wafts in the air. Gasping, I watch with wide-eyed horror as my mother slumps to the floor in a crumpled heap. The blood from the bullet hole quickly saturates her nightgown, spreading like a wildfire across the fibers. Then, across the tiles.

The blast of the gun has awoken Isa. She begins to howl. Trying to console her, I bounce her in my arms, but it’s more like a bad case of the jitters; the more I bounce her, the more she cries. My poor little baby girl is picking up on my terror.

“Give me Mia!” barks Marley, breaking into my shock.

Mia.I’ve heard that name before, but when, where and how?

“Who?” I squeak out, my voice shrill as a lark’s.

Pointing the gun at me, Marley rolls her eyes. “My daughter.”

Herdaughter? Is she completely out of her mind?

“Her name is now Miabel Marie. Mia for short. My sister’s name was Mabel and my mother’s, Marie, in French. Isa will get used to it. Learn to love it.”

Her words shake me to the core. She is completely deranged. I need to stall her. Figure out a way to escape safely with my baby. My heart races. My mind races. Every nerve is on edge.

A wild thought. “Ned’ll be home any minute. I can hear his car,” I lie. “He won’t let you get away with this!”

She breaks into hysterical laughter. “Ned’s not coming home.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ned’s dead.” She laughs again. “Isn’t that poetic? Ned’s dead,” she repeats. “Or is it poetic justice? I’ve honestly never understood that phrase.”

Lightning flashes as confusion sweeps through me. “W-what do you mean? I got a text from him earlier saying he was twenty minutes away.”

“From his phone?”

I watch with imploding dread as she digs her free hand again into her bag. She holds up an object.

“Familiar?”

I resist clamping a hand to my mouth. Oh my God. It’s Ned’s cell phone, easily recognizable by the gold embossed, monogrammed phone case.

I shiver as she continues.

“You know, your husband was a prick. The bastard didn’t give a damn about my sister, or her baby.”

She hurls his phone across the room. It smacks a wall before clattering on the floor.

“And he didn’t give a damn about you or your baby either. He was about to cheat on you…with yours truly. Me!”

As I back away from her, I wonder if I should tell her that was my plan all along? My attorney client friend, Gershon Loeb, got back to me and found two loopholes in my prenup. In my favor.

The first: While I’d get nothing if I asked for a divorce, Gersh discovered I could get a hefty settlement and joint custody of Isa if Ned initiated one. Throughout my challenging pregnancy, I knew Ned was fed up with me, losing interest in me. Even repulsed by me. And then Marley came along. It was obvious he was attracted to her—I’m not a horse with blinders—and he’d be tempted. The night of the gala, I fed her right to him. Like a rat to a snake.

But there was no guarantee either of them would fall into my trap. And I knew how Ned was trapped in our marriage by his parents’ will. And how much he wanted the rest of his trust fund. I had one other option…

Marley tightens her grip on the gun, keeping it pointed at me. “Oh, I should also mention that Ned was going to kill you.”

As calmly as I can, I listen carefully to this new piece of information without interruptions. And without raising a brow.

“I found some arsenic hidden in your medicine cabinet. Lucky for you, I stole it.” She smirks. “And lucky for me, I got to end his sorry life.”

What’s lucky for me is that she spared me from ending his life. I was the one who purchased the arsenic online. I did some research. My plan was to put a large dose in his coffee after he came back from his retreat. With his arrhythmia, he would have gone into instant cardiac arrest and died within minutes. Without an autopsy, it would be declared a heart attack, given his family history. I’d get away with murder…

And be a free woman. Free to marry someone else. The man I love. The man we belong with.

Plus, according to Gersh, with Ned gone, I’d get everything.

She did me a favor. For a split second, I think about telling her, but what’s the point? It’s after the fact and will accomplish nothing. If anything, get her more worked up.

She sniggers. “But don’t worry, Ava, he never touched me. And I never wanted him. Honestly, his dick was nothing to write home about.”

Right now, I could care less about that. The only thing I care about is keeping her talking so I can figure out a way to escape with Isa.

She moistens her lips. “Ned deserved to die. If the narcissistic prick had paid for my sister to have had decent medical treatment, she and her baby would have survived instead of dying in that rat hole at the hands of your shyster father.” She pauses. “And my mother would have never been taken away from me.”

“How did you kill him?” I ask, more to buy myself time than out of curiosity.

“The arsenic was only part of it. I don’t have time to go into details, though I should mention your housekeeper is never coming back either.”

“You killed Rosita too?” I gasp. This startling revelation is more devastating than Ned’s demise. The poor hardworking woman didn’t deserve to die.

“You’re next, if you don’t hand me my baby.”

Oh, God! She’s a bona fide psychopath! A cold lump of fear forms in my throat. My voice rises above it. “She’s not your baby! She’s mine!”

“No, Ava, she’s mine! Call it compensation, if you will. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.” She narrows her violet eyes at me. She looks violent and volatile. “Do you think it was an accident we met in Starbucks?”

I stare at her blankly.

“It was all part of my plan. Now, hand Mia over or I’ll have no choice but to kill you. And that will be such a shame because I kind of liked you.”

“No!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

Then suddenly, a deafening explosion rips through my ears. It seems to go on forever.

Rattling the house.

Rattling my bones.

My baby’s cries grow louder. I have the urgent need to protect her and wrap my arms around her quivering little body, holding her close to me.

The deafening sound goes on, crescendoing.

Fear shakes me. What is it? It’s too loud and long to be another gunshot.

LA is under siege. The hurricane!

All at once the lights go off.

The house goes pitch black.

“What the f—?” I hear Marley mutter under her breath.

We’ve lost power. I can’t see her and she can’t see me. The doll dangling from my hand, my baby wailing in her carrier, I flee. My mind races. My heart races. In the total darkness, I may have a chance to escape her. Save my baby. Save myself.

I’m not yet out of the kitchen when Marley fires the gun again. Bullets ricochet off the walls.

Then suddenly, white-hot pain tears through me, searing my flesh as I silently scream.

I put my hand to the back of my shoulder. A warm, scarlet liquid soaks through my top.

I’ve been shot!