The Threadwell women have never been lucky.They have been protected.Bound by an oath spoken at the edge of death, each firstborn daughter lives-while someone else pays the cost. Accidents reroute. Illness passes them by. Trains miss their mark. And the ledger quietly balances itself elsewhere.Generation after generation, the curse endures.Lives are traded. Witnesses are made.And the one sworn to protect them is changing with every soul he takes in their stead.This is the story that lives in the margins of Death Comes Calling.The inheritance Mary Harrow never touches but runs parallel with.The price paid by women who survive too long.Because protection is never free.And Death never forgets a promise.