On Christmas, my mother put a dog bowl in front of my premature baby and told everyone she didn’t belong in the family pictures. I started leaving—until Mom accidentally revealed why she desperately needed me to stay.

Marcus was seventy, but he moved with the wiry, desperate strength of a man defending a fortune.

His leather-gloved hand shot forward, grabbing my left wrist, pulling me hard toward the landing. I lost my footing on the polished oak step, my hip slamming violently against the banister. Pain flared through my side, but the adrenaline surging through my veins drowned it out.

With my free right hand, I swung the steel monitor base with everything I had.

The heavy metal corner caught Marcus squarely across the cheekbone. The sickening crunch of cartilage echoed in the stairwell. Marcus roared in pain, stumbling backward down two steps, his hand flying to his face. Blood welled between his fingers, dark and thick in the moonlight.

"You miserable little bitch!" he snarled, his patrician veneer peeling away to reveal the animal underneath.

He lunged again, tackling me around the waist before I could scramble back up to the landing. We hit the stairs in a tangle of limbs. I kicked wildly, my bare heel catching him in the shin, but he used his weight to pin my legs against the risers. His fingers dug into my collarbone, driving his thumb toward my throat.

"You think your mother was the monster?" Marcus wheezed, spit flying from his lips onto my cheek. "Evelyn was an amateur! A spoiled brat with a bad temper! I built this empire with Sarah! I protected it from taxes, from lawsuits, from the government! I am not letting a thirty-year-old schoolteacher take it away because of some sentimental delusion!"

Air caught in my windpipe. Black spots danced across my vision. Emma’s cries from the nursery grew louder, hysterical, bouncing off the rafters.

*Think, Clara. Think.*

My right hand, pinned beneath his ribcage, was still clutching the laminated cryogenic badge he had dropped on the stairs. The plastic card had a sharp, clipped metallic corner where the lanyard clip had broken off.

I dug the jagged plastic edge directly into the open wound on Marcus's cheek.

Marcus shrieked, a high-pitched, guttural sound of pure agony. His grip on my throat vanished as his hands flew to his face.

I didn't hesitate. I rolled violently to the right, throwing my full weight against his torso. Thrown off balance on the narrow staircase, Marcus teetered, his arms flailing for the handrail.

He found only empty air.

With a heavy, sickening succession of impacts, Marcus tumbled backward down the entire twelve-step flight of stairs, his body crashing against the oak risers before landing limp and motionless on the slate floor of the hearth below.

He didn't move. His head was twisted at an unnatural angle against the brass fender of the fireplace, a pool of dark liquid spreading beneath his gray hair.