PROLOGUE
VIOLET
The music from the dance still echoed faintly in my ears when I turned onto the long driveway of our home, and then it stopped.
Red. Blue. Red. Blue.
Police lights flooded the front of our house, cutting through the dark like a warning I didn’t understand yet. My stomach dropped so hard it made me lightheaded.
No, no, no…
I slowed the car, my hands tightening on the wheel as the scene came into focus. Patrol cars lined the drive. The front door hung wide open. Light spilled out into the night like something had been ripped open inside.
My pulse stumbled.
“Are they here for me?” I whispered, my voice barely there. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t. Sneaking out wasn’t… this. My father would never risk attention like this over something so small.
So why were they here?
I stopped the car too far from the house, like getting closer might make it real. For a second, I couldn’t move. Something deep in my chest twisted, tight and wrong.
Go. Go to Lily.
The thought hit like a shove. I was out of the car before I fully registered it, my heels slamming against the pavement as I ran. Yellow tape snapped in the wind.
“Hey—HEY!” someone shouted. I didn’t stop.
“Lily?” My voice cracked as I pushed through the front door. “Lily!”
Strangers. Uniforms. Too many of them.
My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat harder than the last as I turned in circles, searching.
I moved, rushing to Lily’s room. The stairs blurred beneath my feet.
Please be fine. Please be fine. Please…
I hit her doorway so hard it felt like I’d run into a wall. The room was destroyed. Drawers ripped open. Clothes everywhere. The lamp knocked sideways, its shade crushed.
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
And then… blood.
It soaked into the white rug like it belonged there. My breath left me in a broken sound I didn’t recognize.
“Violet!”
I turned as my mother stumbled out of the bathroom. Her face was streaked with tears, her hands shaking, her whole body barely holding together.
“Mom, what happened?” I asked, but the calm in my voice felt like a lie. Like it belonged to someone else.
She grabbed me, hard. “Where is Lily?”
“I—what?”
“Where is she?” she cried, her voice breaking. “I thought she was with you…”
“She’s not with you?”
