The marble floors of the Richmond estate gleamed under a crystal chandelier so large it made Abigail feel like she had walked into a church.

Hank was already gone. A woman in a severe black suit stood at the base of the grand staircase with the expression of someone who had been told to do an unpleasant task and had decided to do it as quickly as possible.

The housekeeper didn't introduce herself. She gave Abigail's clothes a slow, sweeping look, then turned on her heel.

Abigail followed, walking on her tiptoes to keep her sneakers from squeaking on the marble. Her calves burned. She felt like an exhibit in a museum — something to be examined and quietly pitied.

The room at the end of the second-floor hallway was enormous. It was also completely sterile. No pictures. No books. No trace that anyone had ever existed inside it. It felt less like a bedroom and more like a very expensive waiting room.

"Dinner is served at exactly seven o'clock," the housekeeper said, and pulled the door shut with a definitive click.

Abigail stood alone in the silence.

She dropped her canvas bag on the floor, walked to the large window, and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Below, a perfectly trimmed hedge divided the Richmond property from a neighboring gothic-style estate that loomed dark and angular in the gray afternoon light.

Then she heard it.

A violin. But not music — not really. It was violent and frantic, a sound like someone dragging a bow across the strings with both hands and all of their rage. It seeped through the double-paned glass, barely contained.

Abigail pushed the window open a crack.

The sound flooded in. On the second-floor balcony of the neighboring estate, a boy stood in a loose white button-down shirt. Dark hair. Disheveled. He was playing the violin the way some people threw things — with his entire body, jerking with every savage stroke of the bow.

It was destruction in musical form. And it didn't stop.

A figure marched across the lawn below. Hank.

The perfect, untouchable Hank Richmond threw his head back and screamed something up at the balcony. His face was red, his composure shattered. He looked like a completely different person than the boy who had met her at the station.

The boy on the balcony stopped. He looked down. A slow, deliberate smirk spread across his face — the kind that meant he had been waiting for exactly this reaction.

He set the violin down on a wicker chair like it was worthless.

He picked up a large glass pitcher of ice water from the patio table.

Abigail's hand flew to her mouth.

He tipped it. All of it. The water and ice crashed down from the second floor in a perfect arc and hit Hank directly on the head.

Hank wiped his face with both hands, pointing, screaming words the glass muffled into silence. The boy just laughed — open, manic, completely unhinged — the laugh of someone who genuinely did not care what came next.

Abigail had pressed her palm flat against the cold windowpane before she even realized she'd moved.

The boy's laughter stopped.

His head turned. Not gradually — it snapped to the side like a predator catching a scent. His eyes locked directly onto her window with a precision that made her blood go cold.

He couldn't possibly see her. She was two estates away, half-hidden behind a curtain.

But his gaze didn't move.

It was dark. Sharp. Hostile in a way that felt less like a warning and more like a promise.

Abigail stumbled backward. Her heel caught the edge of a side table. A small porcelain figurine tipped over and hit the carpet with a dull thud. Her heart was hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth.

She crept back to the window and peeked through the curtain slit.

The balcony was empty. Hank was still on the lawn below, aggressively wiping down his ruined blazer.

Three sharp knocks hit her door.

"Miss," the housekeeper's flat voice called. "It is time to meet your parents."

Abigail stared at the empty balcony for one more second.

She had the unsettling feeling that whoever that boy was, he had already filed her away somewhere in his mind. And not somewhere good.

Abigail slapped both cheeks lightly, trying to force some color into her skin, and opened the door.

She moved slowly down the hallway, sneakers silent on the thick carpet. As she passed the master bedroom, a sliver of warm pink light spilled from a door left slightly ajar.

She should have kept walking. She didn't.

She pushed the door open just an inch.

It was a princess room. The walls were covered in framed photographs of a beautiful blonde girl at every age — birthday candles, ski slopes, ballet recitals, beach vacations. A pristine white Steinway sat in the corner. Every surface held something careful and precious and loved.

This was her room. The life that had been lived in her place.

Abigail's chest ached with something she didn't have a name for yet. She stepped inside.

Her eyes landed on a crystal music box resting on the piano lid. She reached out slowly, her calloused fingertip barely grazing the cold surface.

"Don't touch her things!"

The scream hit her like a physical blow.

Abigail spun around. A woman in a silk dressing gown stood in the doorway, her face twisted into something beyond anger — something closer to grief turned inside out. This was what Danita Richmond looked like when she stopped trying to hide it.

She lunged forward and shoved Abigail hard in the shoulder.

Abigail's back hit the wall with a painful thud. She bit down on the inside of her cheek.

Danita snatched the music box, turned it over in her hands, checking every angle for damage. Her fingers were shaking.

Abigail looked at the woman who had given birth to her and felt the temperature in her own blood drop several degrees.

"You do not belong in this room," Danita said. The words were quiet now. Somehow that was worse. "Get out."

No hug. No tears. Not even the performance of welcome.

"I'm sorry," Abigail whispered, and fled.

She found the dining room at the end of the first-floor hall. A mahogany table stretched the length of the room, set with silver that caught the light like small suns. At the head sat an elderly man with a hawk-nosed, severe face and a cane propped against his chair. Warren Richmond, the patriarch.

Hank was already seated, wearing a dry shirt, staring at his silverware as if she didn't exist.

Warren pointed to the chair across from Hank with the rubber tip of his cane. Abigail sat.

Danita arrived last. She didn't look at Abigail once. She sat down and reached for her wine glass.

Warren cleared his throat. "From today forward," he announced, his voice the kind that expected no argument, "Abigail is the only legal heir of this branch of the Richmond family."

The sound of silver screeching against porcelain. Danita had dragged her fork across her plate.

"Blood doesn't mean everything," Danita said, her voice dangerously soft. "I only have one daughter. And her name is Debbra."

Warren's face went purple. He slammed his palm on the table. "Debbra is a fraud! She has been sent away. You will not speak her name in this house!"

Hank moved so fast his chair shrieked across the floor. He was on his feet, his face pale with a fury that looked too big for the room, and then he was gone — out the door, footsteps hammering down the hallway.

The silence he left behind was suffocating.

Danita turned her head. Her eyes found Abigail for the first time all evening.

The look lasted only three seconds. But it was enough. It was the look of someone who had identified the source of everything that had gone wrong in their life and was deciding what to do about it.

Abigail looked down at the Beef Wellington on her plate. Her stomach cramped. She couldn't eat.

Warren's voice cut across the table. "Pick up your knife and fork. You will learn the rules of this house."

Her hands trembled. The silver clinked awkwardly against the porcelain, the sound filling the dead air of the enormous room. She put a piece of tasteless meat in her mouth and chewed.

One tear fell before she could stop it, hitting the expensive plate without a sound.

She thought about the crystal music box, and the photographs on the walls, and the sixteen years that girl had lived inside this house with these people.

She thought: they are not going to forgive me for existing. And there is nothing I can do about that.

She lay awake until the gray light of dawn crept across the ceiling.

Abigail pulled on her cleanest sweater, took three slow breaths at the door, and went downstairs.

She heard them before she saw them. A light, musical laugh — Danita's laugh, soft and real in a way it had never once been directed at Abigail. She stopped on the landing and peered through the balusters.

In the sunlit dining room below, Hank was handing Danita a piece of perfectly toasted bread. Danita smiled, touching his arm. It was a complete, self-contained world. Every piece in its place.

Abigail had shattered it just by arriving.

Her stomach growled. She had to eat. She forced herself down the stairs and into the dining room.

The laughter stopped the moment her foot crossed the threshold.

"Good morning," she said softly.

Silence.

Hank looked at his phone. Danita looked out the window, through Abigail, as if she were made of glass.

Then Abigail noticed the table. Two placemats. Two plates. Two cups.

The housekeeper materialized from the shadow near the kitchen door. "Your name was not on the list for breakfast service this morning, Miss," she said, her voice professionally blank.

So that was how it was going to be.

"That's okay," Abigail said. She kept her voice light. She found a glass, filled it with tap water from the sideboard pitcher, and sat at the far end of the long table, as small and far away as she could make herself.

The moment her chair scraped the floor, Danita set down her cup.

"It's suddenly very stuffy in here," she said, wrinkling her nose. She folded her napkin with precise, deliberate movements. "Have the car brought around. I'm going to the salon."

She left without a glance.

Hank stood a beat later, grabbing his blazer. "We leave for school in ten minutes," he said to the wall, and was gone.

Abigail sat alone in the enormous room, holding a glass of water.

She drank it in one long swallow and made herself a promise: she would not beg. She would not perform. She would treat this house like a hostile hotel, and she would expect absolutely nothing from the people inside it. It was the only way to get through this without breaking.

She reached into her canvas bag and closed her fingers around a battered brass pocket watch. Niall, her foster brother, had pressed it into her hands at the Ohio bus station four days ago. So you don't forget, he'd said, that somebody thinks you're worth finding.

She held it for exactly ten seconds. Then she let go, squared her shoulders, and walked out to the Escalade.

The driver hit the gas before she had fully settled into the seat. The SUV lurched forward, slamming her spine against the leather. She didn't make a sound. She just gripped the door handle and watched Boston rise up through the tinted glass.

Whatever was waiting for her at St. Jude's Preparatory School, she was going to need every bit of that steel she'd spent sixteen years building.