The mansion's white stucco walls gleamed in the moonlight with false purity as one of two burly men operated an elaborate keypad and handprint recognition system. Carina stood silently between the two men, her eyes flashing silent contempt. Although they tried to pass themselves off as protectors, they were, in fact, her prison guards. Alfredo and Neville were their names, but she called daddy's pet gorillas Freddie and Neddie, to their everlasting disgust.

A knock on the door of her apartment in Gavarone's capital city, St. George, in the wee hours of the morning two weeks ago had turned out to be Neddie, telling her to get dressed and come. Now. Eduardo, her father, had ordered her home to his estate outside the city, and Daddy always got his way.

As Freddie and Neddie stood back now to let her enter, she glanced up and noticed that the mansion's adobe-tiled roof was the color of blood tonight. How appropriate was that? She shuddered and took a deep breath. She could do this. Just go inside and play the obedient daughter for one more night. Man, she hated this house and her forced presence in it. Her escape plan had to work. She'd go stark raving mad if it didn't. And Daddy would never guess that Tony, her openly gay clubbing buddy, had the cajones to help her escape.

Her rendezvous with him tonight on the dance floor of a nightclub in St. George had gone well. Freddie and Neddie had lurked by the bar like trolls the whole time, never suspecting that she and Tony had put the last touches on their scheme while they gyrated under the strobe lights.

She'd passed off a wad of her jewelry to Tony. He'd pawn it and buy her a plane ticket from this sleepy little corner of South America to an even sleepier corner of New England. Her older sister, Julia, was there already, hiding from their father. Eduardo would never dream that she'd sentence herself to such a quiet existence. Little did he know that she desperately craved the peace such a place could offer.

But in Eduardo's house, it was all about playing the game. Giving him exactly what he expected to see. Truth be told, she'd gotten sick of the party scene years ago. But right now, her constant outings to nightclubs were the only bright spot in her existence. And how lame was that? Thankfully, she'd convinced daddy dearest that if she didn't make occasional appearances in her regular Gavronese haunts rumors would get started about her. Rumors that would draw media attention to him that he couldn't afford.

It was the one chink she'd found in her father's formidable armor over the years. An international criminal feared on four continents didn't have too many exploitable weaknesses. But he didn't like to draw unnecessary attention from the press. Of course, that meant she'd spent the last few years doing everything in her power to draw media attention to herself and, indirectly, to him.

And then, of course, there was the money. She did her level best to relieve her father of as much of it as possible, to put it back lavishly into the hands of the working people he'd stolen it from. Sometimes she just gave it away. Fistfuls to any random person in need whom she happened to run across. It was a huge bone of contention between them. But until Eduardo actually pulled the financial plug — and oh, the media stink she'd make if he ever did — she planned to spend it as fast and furiously as she could think up ways to do so. It wasn't much, but it was one small act to make amends to society for her father.

Carina paused in the dim cavern of the foyer and kicked off her strappy high heels. Dangling the skimpy shoes from her fingers, she climbed the long, curving staircase toward her room. The mansion's ornate walls pressed in on her heavily. One more night in this wretched house of horrors and then she'd be free. Forever.

"Good evening, Miss Cari."

She looked up at the gravelly voice. Gunter, her father's gray-haired German chief of security, had worked for her father for as long as she could remember. "Hi," she replied.

"Out late, I see," he commented with a hint of disapproval in his voice.

"Good band," she mumbled.

"I'm glad you're back safely, at any rate."

Sheesh. What did it say when the hired help paid more attention to her than her own father? She flashed a genuine smile at the older man. "Thanks."

Her father had been grouchy and distracted ever since the trouble with her older sister a month ago. Quiet, boring, responsible Julia had up and taken off for the United States with copies of all her father's financial records and a whole bunch of his money. Who'd have guessed sweet Julia had it in her?

Although Eduardo hadn't said so, he'd undoubtedly dragged her back home to the estate to put pressure on Julia. It wasn't a new trick in his retinue of control tactics over Julia — just an extremely annoying one. Cari was really sick and tired of being their pawn. She was an adult trying to have a life of her own. And what was so damned wrong with that?

This situation between Eduardo and Julia was getting worrisome. The maids were whispering that Julia had made off with millions and that her father was threatening to kill Julia when he found her. Surely, that was an exaggeration. But just maybe, it wasn't. Both of them had upped the stakes to the point where neither one could afford to back down. And Cari was trapped in the middle. She had to get out before their confrontation blew sky- high, with her caught square in the blast.

Four o'clock tomorrow morning was zero hour for her escape. Twenty-five hours and ten minutes to go. She could make it that long.

She walked down the long hallway toward her bedroom at the back of the house. The half moon high overhead sent cold, blue-white light through the gauze curtains into her bedroom. She didn't turn on the lights as she stepped over the threshold. Rather, she made her way to the French doors leading to the balcony and threw them open. She stepped outside into cool air that raised goose bumps on her arms. Leaning on the wide stone balustrade that surrounded the balcony, she listened to the rhythmic pounding of the surf visible below until the cold soaked her completely through.

Too jittery to sleep, she delayed going back inside despite the shivers coursing through her. Freezing felt better than the dull numbness that so often came over her from living under her father's iron fist.

The ocean was turbulent tonight, with white breakers rolling into the sand, pounding it in a relentless, mesmerizing rhythm. She watched its impersonal grandeur for a long time, feeling smaller and smaller in the face of its power.

She was lonely. Was it too much to wish for someone who would simply love her? No strings attached, no scheming, no danger? Just a little old-fashioned tender loving care? A tear escaped the corner of her eye and ran slowly down her cheek, cold against her skin. It was the chilly breeze. She would not descend to crying for herself.

Finally, reluctantly, she turned to go back inside. One more night in her gilded prison. One more night in her white lace bed. One more night as Eduardo Ferrare's daughter. God, she couldn't wait to disappear, to shed her skin and her past, and to begin a new life.

She padded across the expanse of white carpet to her bed. Lost in her thoughts, she pulled off her silk blouse, leaving on the white cotton tank top underneath. She shimmied out of her short leather skirt and let it fall to the floor as well. Abruptly exhausted, she pulled back the covers in the dark and crawled into bed.

That was odd. Her bed didn't feel right. The mattress moved heavily. She rolled over and plumped the pair of eiderdown pillows she favored and noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a strangely shaped shadow enveloping the bed. Big and dark, it encompassed most of the other side of her bed.

And then two more things struck her simultaneously: a sensation of wetness on her skin and a metallic smell.

What in the world...

She sat up and took a good look at the other side of her bed. And jumped violently. There was someone lying there!

The house's ventilation system kicked on just then, its fan billowing her curtains just enough to cast a thin shaft of moonlight across her bed. She caught a glimpse of a silver crucifix earring in her unexpected companion's left ear.

"Jeez Louise, Tony," she whispered. "You scared the daylights out of me! How in the world did you get up here without my father's men seeing you?" She reached over and nudged his shoulder. She whispered, "Hey, you. Wake up. Don't snooze through my great escape on me, will you?"

Nothing. A feeling of dread rose from her stomach. "Tony. Wake up." She shook him harder.

He was out like a light.

She reached over and turned on the small lamp on the nightstand beside her bed. It cast a circle of yellow light on the room. She turned back to Tony.

Her scream split the night air like the fall of a guillotine. There was blood everywhere. Her white lace bedspread was soaked in red. The sheets, the pillows and now even her clothing were bathed in it. Congealed blood defined a dark gash across Tony's neck. Frantically, she crouched over him, pressing her hand against the long wound.

"Tony!" she cried. "Oh, God, Tony!"

And then she noticed his eyes, glassy and blank, staring off into space. His mouth was open, pulled back into a rictus of terror. She glanced down at the bed and saw his hand clenched around the sheets. A single thought exploded in her brain.

Her father had slit a man's throat in his own daughter's bed. The horror of it hit her first, sending bile up into her throat. And then the guilt struck. If she hadn't asked Tony to help her, he wouldn't be lying here, dead. She felt violently sick to her stomach.

On top of everything else, a wave of utter hopelessness slammed into her. She'd never escape her father. Never. And with that thought, despair closed in on her.

She knew her father was a criminal. A cruel, ruthless man. But never, ever, had he turned that violence directly on her. That had been the one constant in her life. Her father loved her in a distant sort of way, and for all his flaws, he'd always protected her from the world he lived in.

But tonight, he'd smashed that silent covenant to smithereens in a pool of blood.

And that was what broke her. Something cracked inside her heart. It was too much to bear. She couldn't go on any longer. She wasn't strong enough to keep fighting who and what her father was.

A great black pit of despair yawned before her and, numbly, she stepped into it. She scrambled awkwardly off the bed, backing away, nauseated, from her last hope for freedom. She noticed vaguely that she was leaving bloody footprints on the white carpet.

Clumsy with creeping terror, she pulled out the fire escape ladder stored in the trunk by the French doors and fumbled to hook it onto the balcony ledge. Desperately fleeing the horror behind her, she flung herself over the side of the stone railing.