Chapter 1

As the ruthless Donna, the only person I cared about was my 200-pound daughter.

To encourage her lose weight, I hired her a fitness coach and opened a reward account in her name.

For every pound she lost, I deposited one hundred thousand dollars.

Six months later, I flew home—and got a phone call.

My daughter had been caught stealing a sandwich from a store.

That same night, the coach I hired was throwing herself a million-dollar birthday party.

Paid for with my daughter’s money.

“Everyone—bring your guns!” I roared.

It was time to make her pay.

……

The call came at three in the morning, my time.

"Is this Lily Kane's mother?" A man's voice, rough and impatient, crackled down the line. "Your daughter stole a sandwich from my store. We caught her red-handed."

I sat up in bed. "There must be some mistake."

"No mistake. She stuffed it under her shirt like a rat, and I have her on camera." He laughed, an ugly sound. "Here's the deal, lady. You pay me ten times the price, cash, or I call the police and your little thief goes to jail."

I didn't answer right away. My mind had gone somewhere else entirely.

Six months ago, before I left the country on business, I had handed Lily a black card with no spending limit.

On top of that, I opened a reward account just for her. She was seventeen with a BMI of 35, and her doctor had warned me twice about her health, so I made her a deal.

For every pound she lost, one hundred thousand dollars would drop straight into that account, wired automatically by the smart scale in her bathroom.

She cried when I told her, and she hugged me and promised she would try. I kissed her round face and told her the money didn't matter, that I only wanted her healthy.

That girl had no reason on earth to steal a sandwich.

"Hello? You still there?" the man snapped. "Ten times the price, right now, or she sleeps in a cell tonight."

Something in his tone made my blood go slow and cold. "Put her on the phone."

"She's not talking to anyone. I locked her in my storage room to teach her a lesson, and that's where she stays until I see my money."

I was already out of bed and reaching for my clothes. "Don't touch her. Don't say one more word to her. I'm on my way."

My assistant had the jet ready in twenty minutes. By dawn we were over the ocean, and by eight my helicopter was touching down on a rooftop two blocks from the address he had given me.

The shop was a cramped corner deli with flickering lights. The owner stood behind the register, a heavy man with small wet eyes, and when he saw my clothes and my watch he smiled like a man who had just won the lottery.

"Ten times," he said. "Cash."

"Show me my daughter first."

He shrugged and led me through the back, then unlocked a metal door. The smell of bleach and rotting vegetables rolled out into the hallway.

The girl in the corner was not the daughter I remembered.

Lily had been soft and round her whole life. The last time I held her, her arms were full and her cheeks were pink.

The child pressed against that storage room wall had hollow cheeks and collarbones like blades, and her school uniform hung off her body like a sack.

There were bruises up and down her arms, old yellow ones layered under fresh purple ones, and a scabbed cut ran along her hairline.

She was shaking. The room was not cold.

"Mom?" Her voice came out small and cracked, like she didn't trust it.

I crossed that filthy floor in two steps and dropped to my knees in front of her. "Baby. I'm here. I'm right here."

And my daughter, who used to sprint into my arms the second I walked through the door, flinched away from me.

She pressed her back into the wall and covered her face with both hands. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Don't look at me. I know I'm disgusting. I'm sorry."

My hands froze in the air between us.

Behind me the owner cleared his throat. "Real touching. Now, about my money—"

"Get out."

I don't know what he heard in my voice, but he left, and the door clicked shut behind him. I sat down on the floor beside my daughter, close but not touching her, the way you sit beside a stray animal that has been kicked too many times.

"Lily. Look at me. Who did this to you?"

She shook her head hard, tears cutting down her sunken cheeks, and she kept whispering that she was sorry, that she would lose the weight, that she would be good.

It took twenty minutes to get the truth out of her, one broken piece at a time.

Ashley. The live-in weight-loss coach I paid two hundred thousand a year, the maid's daughter I had practically raised. With help from Jake, the bodyguard I hired to keep Lily safe, she had taken my daughter's black card and her reward account, and changed every password.

At school she told everyone Lily was her family's charity case. And the whole school had volunteered to help my daughter "lose weight."

They locked her out of the cafeteria. They dumped her lunch in the trash in front of her while she watched. They made her run laps until she collapsed, and Ashley's friends filmed it, and nobody, nobody, had fed my child a real meal in months.

She stole a three-dollar sandwich because she was starving to death.

I sat on that dirty floor and held my trembling daughter, and something inside me went very quiet.

I paid those two to protect her. Instead, they had nearly killed her.