Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN I CALLED INSTEAD OF MY FATHER
The police officer looked at me like I had just made the worst decision of my life.
“Eleanor Hargrove?” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Are you sure you don't want your father?”
“No.”
“Son, your father has already sent two attorneys.”
“Then tell them to go home.”
The officer sighed.
My name is Mason Cavanaugh. I was seventeen years old, and until that afternoon, nobody in Fairhaven had ever heard me refuse my father's help.
But I was finished hiding behind his money.
I stared at the dried blood on my knuckles.
Across the station, a seventeen-year-old named Tyler Mercer sat beside his father, pressing an ice pack against his cheek.
Tyler wasn't badly injured.
The emergency-room physician had already confirmed that.
But his father was demanding charges.
And I understood why it looked terrible.
The privileged Cavanaugh boy had punched another teenager outside Fairhaven Preparatory Academy.
Another scandal.
Another problem Julian Cavanaugh could make disappear.
Except this time, I wasn't going to let him.
Twenty-three minutes later, the station doors opened.
Eleanor Hargrove walked inside wearing a dark green sweater, rain on her shoulders, and the same calm expression she'd worn when I threw breakfast into the trash six months earlier.
She looked at my face.
Then at my hands.
Then at the officer.
“Has Mason received medical attention?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Has he been questioned with appropriate safeguards for a minor?”
The officer straightened.
“His attorney is available.”
Eleanor nodded.
Then she approached me.
I expected disappointment.
Anger.
Maybe a lecture.
Instead, she sat beside me.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
She waited.
I looked away.
Then she spoke quietly.
“Mason, I won't ask you to lie. And I won't lie for you.”
My throat tightened.
“But I will listen.”
Those four words nearly broke me.
Because nobody in our house ever listened.
Not really.
My father gave orders.
My oldest brother, Adrian, threatened people.
Theo laughed at everything that hurt.
And thirteen-year-old Finn barely spoke above a whisper.
We were four sons living inside a mansion that had become a museum of everything we'd lost.
Eleanor was the first person who seemed interested in the people beneath the damage.
I swallowed.
“Tyler said something about Mom.”
Her expression changed.
“What?”
“He said she didn't die the way everyone thinks.”
Eleanor went still.
“He said Dad paid to bury the truth.”
She reached for my uninjured hand.
“Did he threaten you?”
I nodded.
“He showed me a picture of Finn.”
My voice broke.
“Finn was getting into a car outside school. I didn't recognize the driver.”
Eleanor's face lost all color.
I whispered, “Tyler said if I didn't give him something from Mom's room, Finn would disappear next.”
For the first time since I'd met her, Eleanor looked frightened.
Then the officer returned carrying my phone.
“Mrs. Hargrove, we recovered another message.”
He showed us the screen.
It contained a photograph of my youngest brother asleep in the back seat of a black SUV.
May you like
Beneath it were five words.
YOUR MOTHER WASN'T THE FIRST.
