“I was three feet behind the champagne fountain when it happened,” Rose said, her voice finding its iron core. Her gray-green eyes looked straight into Nathaniel’s deadly gaze. “I saw your mother back away because she didn’t want to argue anymore. And I saw this woman take two steps, plant both of her hands on your mother’s shoulders, and shove her over the lower tier. She didn’t reach for her. She stood there and watched her go.”
“You lying little gutter rat!” Victoria screamed, dropping the terrified socialite act in an instant. Her face distorted into a mask of pure, ugly rage. She lunged forward, her diamond-encrusted manicure aimed straight for Rose’s eyes. “How much did someone pay you to ruin my wedding day? Who sent you?!”
She never reached Rose.
Nathaniel’s hand caught Victoria’s wrist mid-air.
His grip was so absolute, so sudden, that the crack of Victoria’s gold bracelet against his cufflinks sounded like a gunshot. Victoria gasped in genuine pain, her knees buckling.
“Nathaniel!” she cried out, her eyes widening in disbelief. “You’re hurting me! Look at what she’s doing—she’s trying to extort us! She’s trying to set up a lawsuit against the venue!”
“Chief Davis,” Nathaniel said without looking away from Victoria’s face.
The head of Callaway International Security, an ex-Secret Service operative with graying temples and a jaw made of granite, materialized at his shoulder.
“Sir,” Davis responded.
“Lock down the building. No one leaves the eighty-second floor. Collect every phone, every camera, and every memory card from every guest, every server, and every musician.” Nathaniel’s fingers tightened another fraction around his bride’s wrist. “Then contact the District Attorney’s office. Tell Jack I want him here personally in twenty minutes. Not an assistant. Not a detective. Jack.”
Victoria’s breath caught in her throat. “Nathaniel… please. Think about the press. Think about the merger between Callaway and Sterling Enterprises! My father will destroy the stock value if you do this!”
“Your father,” Nathaniel whispered, leaning down so close his lips brushed the diamond pendant dangling from her ear, “will be lucky if I leave him enough money to pay for your commissary snacks at Rikers Island.”
He threw her hand back with an expression of utter disgust, as if he had just touched something pulled from a sewer drain.
Victoria stumbled, catching herself against a decorative marble pillar. Two armed security personnel immediately flanked her, their hands resting deliberately on the holsters beneath their blazers.
Paramedics burst through the double doors, rolling a mechanized stretcher across the terrace. Nathaniel stepped back, his entire posture softening only when he looked down at the elderly woman on the floor.
“I’ve got you, Mother,” he said, kneeling again, his voice dropping into a register of tenderness that none of his employees had ever heard. “You’re safe now. I’m right here.”
“The girl, Nathaniel,” Eleanor whispered, her breathing ragged as the medics applied an oxygen mask to her face. She pointed a trembling, bloodstained finger toward Rose. “The girl… don’t let her… leave.”
“She won’t leave,” Nathaniel promised.
He rose again, turning to face Rose, who was currently wrapping a cloth napkin around her torn left palm. Blood had already soaked through the thick linen.
“What’s your name?” Nathaniel asked.
“Rose,” she answered simply. “Rose Vance.”
Nathaniel looked at the frayed cuffs of her uniform shirt, the cheap plastic name tag pinned to her chest, and the undeniable fire in her eyes that hadn’t dimmed even when Victoria had threatened her.
“You saved my mother’s life, Rose Vance,” he said.
“I did what anyone would have done,” she replied, wincing as she tightened the knot on her improvised bandage.
“No,” Nathaniel murmured, his eyes sweeping across the sea of frozen billionaires and elite socialites who had done nothing but take out their smartphones to record the fall. “Nobody else moved. Only you.”
He turned to Davis.
“Bring her with us in the convoy. Mother won’t calm down without her in sight. And Davis?”
“Yes, Mr. Callaway?”
Nathaniel spared one last, chilling glance at Victoria, who was now weeping hysterically against the marble pillar as guests raised their phones to film her disgrace.
“Make sure my wife stays right where she is until the police finish taking the fingerprints off my mother’s shoulders.”
The private wing of the Mount Sinai Medical Pavilion smelled of industrial antiseptic, expensive white lilies, and money.
Rose sat on an ultra-suede armchair in the corner of Suite 1400, feeling like a speck of dust that had accidentally settled onto a masterpiece. She was still wearing her work trousers, but someone from Nathaniel’s executive team had provided her with a thick, cashmere zip-up sweater to replace her bloodied service shirt. It was gray, smelled faintly of cedar and expensive cologne, and probably cost more than three months of her rent.
