CHAPTER 8: The Packet Under the Table
The guard picked up the packet with a napkin.
It was small, silver, and crushed at the edge, the kind of thing most guests would mistake for a torn sugar wrapper. But when the guard turned it over, there was no label, no logo, nothing that belonged at a formal dinner table.
Richard reached for it.
Sam caught his wrist.
The ballroom froze.
“Don’t,” Sam said.
For the first time all night, Richard’s polished mask cracked. “Get your hands off me.”
Eleanor stepped backward, suddenly aware that she had spent the evening within inches of a man who may have wanted her dead.
Mara pulled Ethan behind her. She could feel him trembling through his shirt.
Someone called 911. Someone else called hotel security. Cameras were still recording, but now the crowd’s hunger had turned into fear.
Richard lowered his voice. “Eleanor, listen to me. This is being twisted.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “For once, I think I am seeing clearly.”
He laughed bitterly. “Because of him?”
His finger pointed at Ethan like a weapon.
“He is a kitchen child,” Richard said. “A nobody who wanted attention.”
Ethan’s eyes filled again.
Eleanor heard herself in Richard’s words. The same cruelty. The same assumption. The same easy dismissal of a child because he came from the service hallway instead of the front entrance.
May you like
For the first time, shame touched her more deeply than fear.
The police sirens outside grew louder.
