Chapter 2 - Beneath the White Linen
|
Ignoring the sixty pairs of eyes staring at her, three-year-old Lily padded past the velvet dining chairs in her pink socks until she reached my side. She reached up with her free hand and tugged twice on the black wool cuff of my tuxedo sleeve.
I set my champagne flute down untouched and leaned down from my chair so I was at eye level with her.
"What’s wrong, Miss Lily?" I asked gently. "Did Barnaby lose his carrot again?"
Lily squeezed her battered stuffed rabbit tightly against her chest and shook her dark curls. Her small face was dead serious.
"You need to look under the table, Mr. Marcus," Lily said clearly.
I frowned slightly, glancing down at the heavy floor-length Belgian damask tablecloth that draped all the way to the marble tiles.
"Under the table?" I repeated with an indulgent smile. "Is there a monster hiding under there?"
Lily nodded once. Then she lifted her chubby index finger and pointed directly across the corner of the table at Diana.
"She put it there," Lily said.
The temperature inside the eighty-million-dollar dining room seemed to drop twenty degrees in a single heartbeat.
Diana let out a shrill, overly rapid laugh that sounded like fingernails on crystal, reaching out to touch my forearm with her left hand.
"Marcus, honestly, she’s three years old," Diana said quickly, turning a brittle smile toward the board members sitting nearby. "She’s playing hide-and-seek. Rosa, come remove your child before she pulls the silver onto her head."
I would have laughed it off too—if I hadn't been looking directly at Diana’s right shoulder when Lily pointed at her.
The exact millisecond Lily said under the table, Diana’s right hand had dropped off her lap and vanished beneath the white linen tablecloth.
Fast. Much too fast for a woman who thought a toddler was making up a bedtime game.
I didn't look at Rosa. I locked my gaze onto my fiancée’s pale blue eyes.
"What did you put under there, Diana?" I asked quietly.
"Nothing!" Diana snapped, a sudden flush creeping up her neck beneath her diamond choker. "Are you seriously interrogating me at our own engagement dinner because of a maid’s toddler?"
Beside my knee, Lily shook her head stubbornly, her little pink socks planted firmly on the stone floor.
"Uh-uh," Lily said into the hushed room. "She told the man nobody would ever find it there."
Total, suffocating silence fell over all sixty guests. Not a fork clinked. Not a waiter breathed.
Beside me, Diana stopped breathing altogether. Her fingers twitched beneath the white linen.
Slowly, deliberately, I placed both palms on the arms of my chair and pushed myself back. The heavy scrape of the mahogany legs against the polished Italian marble sounded impossibly loud in the quiet penthouse.
"Marcus," Diana warned, her voice dropping an octave into a tight, desperate hiss. "Don't embarrass us in front of your board."
I leaned down and grasped the hem of the white damask tablecloth.
Diana bolted upright from her seat so violently her chair tipped backward until the butler caught it.
"Don't!" she gasped.
That single word told me more than ten hours of interrogation ever could.
I yanked the heavy white linen upward and threw it back across the top of the table, knocking two crystal water goblets onto their sides.
"Marcus, stop!" Diana lunged sideways toward me in her silver gown, her manicured hands clawing downward to block my view.
She was half a second too late.
Wedged tightly into the recessed wooden crossbeam directly beneath the seat of Diana’s chair—held in place by two strips of matte-black tactical adhesive tape—was a rectangular package no larger than a cigar box, wrapped tightly in heavy black vacuum-sealed plastic.
Around the table, gasps erupted. Arthur Pendelton, my senior board member, stood up so fast his champagne flute shattered across his plate. By the pantry door, Rosa clapped both hands over her mouth in horror.
I reached my hand under the chair frame toward the black plastic package.
Before my fingertips could brush the tape, Lily whispered right beside my ear.
May you like
"The man said it had your name inside."
My hand froze an inch from the plastic. I slowly lifted my eyes to look up at Diana. For the first time since the night I met her, every shred of confidence had vanished from her face—replaced by pure, blinding terror.
