CHAPTER 2: The Woman in Champagne
For years, Marcus had trained himself not to react too quickly. Hotels, boardrooms, lawsuits, family scandals—he had learned that powerful men survived by staying calm. But watching his son cling to a woman he had never introduced made every polished lesson disappear.
He moved through the crowd with a speed that made people step aside. Cassandra followed two steps behind him, her smile gone, her jaw tight.
“Oliver,” Marcus said, kneeling beside his son. “What’s wrong? Who is she?”
Oliver only cried harder.
The woman looked at Marcus, and her entire body seemed to change. Recognition flashed in her face, followed by pain so deep it looked older than the child in her arms. She whispered a name under her breath.
“Marcus.”
He heard it.
Not Mr. Hale. Not sir. Marcus.
Cassandra’s voice cut in quickly. “Security should remove her. She clearly frightened the child.”
The woman tightened her arms around Oliver, not possessively, but protectively, like someone holding a memory that had finally become flesh.
“I didn’t frighten him,” she said, voice shaking. “He came to me.”
Marcus stared at her. Something about her eyes disturbed him. He had seen them before—not in person, maybe not clearly, but in dreams he had tried to bury. Brown eyes filled with fire. Brown eyes filled with betrayal. Brown eyes from a photograph his mother had ordered destroyed after the accident.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The woman gave a broken laugh, and the sound pulled several guests closer.
“You did,” she said.
Oliver lifted his wet face. “Dad,” he whispered, “she sings the song.”
Marcus went still.
No one knew that song except Oliver’s mother.
At least, that was what Marcus had been told before he was told she was gone.
Cassandra placed a hand on Marcus’s arm. Her fingers dug in hard enough to warn him.
“Children imagine things when they are upset,” she said. “This woman is taking advantage of him.”
The woman looked at Cassandra for the first time, and fear flickered in her face. Not surprise. Fear.
Marcus saw it.
He rose slowly.
The room had gone silent now, all the glittering people waiting for a scandal to unfold beneath the chandeliers.
Marcus turned back to the woman and asked the question that made Cassandra’s hand fall from his arm.
“How long have you been working these events?”
May you like
The woman swallowed.
“Seven years,” she said. “Ever since your family told me my son was dead.”
