CHAPTER 5: The Man With Silver Hair
Grandpa.
The word did what Vivian’s cruelty could not stop.
It crossed the ballroom and struck Everett Whitmore in the chest.
He had not been called that in his life.
For a long time, he could not move. The entire room watched him age ten years in a few seconds. His face lost its practiced expression of power. His mouth trembled. His eyes, always disciplined in public, filled with the kind of grief that no fortune could educate away.
Vivian stepped closer to him.
“Uncle Everett, please listen to me. This is emotional manipulation.”
But Everett raised a hand.
The room went silent.
He walked toward the child slowly, as if approaching a wounded bird. The guests parted without being asked. Their tuxedos and gowns formed two black walls on either side of the marble path.
Lily took a step back.
Thomas placed one hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “That’s him.”
Everett stopped a few feet away and lowered himself onto one knee. It cost him effort. His knees shook, and Marcus instinctively moved to help, but Everett waved him off.
At eye level, the billionaire no longer looked like a king. He looked like an old man who had lost too much.
“Your mother,” he said carefully. “Was her name Amelia?”
Lily nodded.
The crowd shifted.
Vivian’s mouth tightened.
Everett swallowed.
“Did she ever sing to you?”
Lily wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“She sang about the moon getting stuck in the willow tree.”
Everett shut his eyes.
No one in that room knew the song.
No one except Amelia.
He had made it up when she was four, on a night she was afraid of thunder. He had sung it badly, again and again, until she laughed instead of cried. Later, after her mother died, Amelia would sing it back to him through the door when he stayed too long in his study.
Everett opened his eyes.
A tear slipped down his cheek.
Vivian whispered, “Coincidence.”
May you like
But the old attorney near the stage was no longer watching Lily.
He was watching Vivian.
