Chapter 1 - The Sapphire Dress on the SandAt 12:07 p.m., my mother-in-law’s beach livestream passed 800,000 viewers, and she was wearing the sapphire silk dress she had stolen from my locked bedroom.

Lorraine stood beneath a white canopy, smiling into three cameras while my husband, Evan, adjusted the microphone clipped to her collar.

“Some women know when to cover up,” she announced, pointing at me in my black bikini. “Others force the whole family to look at things nobody asked to see.”

My relatives laughed. Evan stared at the sand.

For fourteen months, every meal had ended this way. Lorraine counted my bites, slapped bread from my hand, and called my weight gain proof that I was lazy. Evan always promised to defend me later. He never did.

Then the sponsor’s ultraviolet stage lights switched on for a “glow reveal.”

Lorraine’s smile vanished.

Bright blue streaks appeared across her fingers, wrists, and the entire front of my stolen dress. She rubbed at them, but the color only spread.

“What did you do to me?” she screamed.

The cameras kept rolling.

Then someone in the crowd gasped. Evan was glowing too. The same electric-blue powder covered his cuffs, his palms, and the inside of his watchband. Comments raced across the monitor so quickly the producer could barely read them.

I stepped closer. “The powder is harmless,” I said. “But it was placed on only one object.”

Lorraine backed away. Evan finally looked at me.

I held up my phone and showed them a photograph of a sealed evidence pouch inside my bedroom safe.

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“That pouch contained the substance my doctor found in my blood,” I said. “So would either of you like to explain why both of you opened it last night?”

Evan lunged toward the camera. The livestream went black.