Chapter 16 - Crashing the Founders' Ball
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Friday night arrived in a blaze of diamonds, flashbulbs, and black-tie grandeur inside the Grand Crystal Ballroom at Navy Pier.
The annual Moretti Holdings Founders’ Ball was the most prestigious charity and corporate event on the Chicago calendar—attended by five hundred banking executives, state senators, port commissioners, and old-money families from New York to Lake Forest, including Judge Robert Walker and his newlywed son, Ethan.
And because the annual $15-million High-Roller Charity Casino Auction was being held in the adjoining vault pavilion to benefit the Eleanor Moretti Children’s Hospital, three armored trucks sat parked inside the subterranean loading dock directly beneath the ballroom floor.
At eight o'clock sharp, I stepped out of the private VIP elevator at the top of the grand marble staircase.
I was wearing the exact floor-length emerald silk evening gown I had bought for Ethan’s wedding six days earlier. Around my bare throat sparkled a simple diamond solitaire necklace, my left ring finger was completely bare, and on my right wrist gleamed the 1928 Cartier bracelet—now secretly restored with its genuine Colombian emerald by Henrik Laurent himself two hours ago.
Walking proudly at my left side was Lorenzo Moretti, and at my right was Victoria.
As the three of us descended the staircase together, five hundred guests stopped talking and broke into spontaneous, thunderous applause. Across Chicago society, word had already spread of how gracefully I had handled Adrian’s public betrayal at the Walker wedding, and seeing Lorenzo and Victoria flank me like their own daughter left zero doubt about who held the throne of Moretti Hospitality.
At the base of the stairs, standing alone near the champagne fountain in a black tuxedo with his hands clenched at his sides, was Adrian.
For four days, I had refused every phone call, returned every bouquet of white roses unopened, and blocked him from entering my floor at the hotel. As I passed within five feet of him on Lorenzo’s arm, Adrian’s dark eyes locked onto me in the emerald gown—looking at me as though I were water in a desert he had burned down with his own hands.
"Claire," Adrian murmured, stepping forward half a pace.
I didn't slow my stride or turn my head by a fraction of an inch. I walked right past him toward the center dais as if he were a waiter holding a tray.
Ten minutes later, as the dinner chimes sounded, a stir broke out near the main glass entrance of the ballroom.
Through the tall mahogany doors walked Julian Cross, surrounded by four of his board members—and clinging boldly to Julian Cross’s arm in a plunging crimson couture gown was Sophia Reynolds.
Gasps and scandalized whispers rippled across every table in the room.
Adrian spun around from the bar, his face turning thunderous as he strode toward the entrance where Cross and Sophia were standing beside the press rope.
"What the hell is she doing here with you, Cross?" Adrian snarled, stopping two feet from his rival while three security guards tensed behind him.
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Sophia didn't play the fragile, weeping victim tonight. With Julian Cross’s arm around her waist and what she believed was a four-million-dollar debt forgiveness contract in her purse once the downstairs armored vaults were emptied at 8:30 PM, she looked at Adrian with a cold, venomous smirk.
"Julian bought ten charity tables for the hospital auction tonight, Adrian," Sophia purred loudly enough for the nearby reporters to hear. "And unlike you, Julian isn't terrified of his mommy and daddy—or his boring little hospice-nurse ex-wife."
