A woman in a dark velvet gown stepped backward and collided with a server’s tray. Three glasses tipped. One broke. The sound released the room from its trance.
Guests began speaking at once, softly but urgently. A man from the hotel’s security team approached, then slowed when he saw Julian’s expression. The quartet members placed their instruments in their cases with the anxious care of people trying not to appear as if they were leaving.
Eleanor turned toward the security officer.
“This woman was seen in the private reception room. My pearl bracelet is missing.”
Leah’s head lifted.
“I was never in that room.”
“You were arranging flowers outside it.”
“I was in the service corridor.”
“With access.”
“With flowers.”
The answer came sharper than Leah intended. She regretted it immediately, not because it was wrong, but because she knew how anger looked when it belonged to a woman kneeling on the floor and how composure looked when it belonged to someone wearing diamonds.
Eleanor noticed the same thing.
“You have loose pearls in your bag.”
“They’re plastic repair beads.”
“You expect us to know that?”
Julian looked down at the pearls scattered across the marble. He picked up one between two fingers, pressed it against his thumbnail, and scraped away a flake of cream-colored paint.
He dropped it.
“Search the building,” he told the security officer. “Not her.”
Eleanor’s face stiffened. “You cannot possibly be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
The officer hesitated. “Mr. Mercer, there are procedures.”
“Then follow them.”
Leah started gathering her belongings. Her hands were unsteady enough that she dropped the scissors twice. One of the servers, a young man with a narrow face and a scar beside his ear, crouched to help her. The other server began collecting the decorative pearls.
Julian still held the locket.
Chap 2
Leah extended her hand.
He looked at it as though he had forgotten the object belonged to someone else.
“That’s mine,” she said.
His fingers closed around it for one reflexive second.
Then he placed it in her palm.
“Who was your mother?”
Leah folded the locket shut. “Claire Bell.”
Julian swayed almost imperceptibly.
Eleanor said his name.
He did not answer.
“My mother died when I was four,” Leah continued. Her voice felt detached from her. “Her friend raised me. Rosa Moreno. She gave me the locket when I turned eighteen.”
Julian studied her face. She saw him searching it, taking measurements he had no right to take—the distance between her eyes, the shape of her chin, whatever he believed grief had preserved.
Leah stood. The satchel’s strap had split where Eleanor grabbed it. She looped the broken leather around her wrist.
“I need to leave.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “Security needs a statement.”
“Security can have mine tomorrow.”
“You do not dictate—”
“Eleanor.”
Julian’s voice was quiet.
She stopped.
The authority in his tone did not impress Leah. It frightened her. Not for herself. For the way Eleanor’s shoulders changed beneath her beaded gown, shrinking and hardening at once.
Leah had seen marriages speak without words. Her adoptive mother, Rosa, had cleaned houses for wealthy families when flower work was slow. Leah sometimes waited in kitchens after school and watched husbands open refrigerators they had no interest in, simply to avoid answering their wives. She had learned that power in a marriage rarely lived where outsiders expected it to.
Julian turned to Leah.
“Let my driver take you home.”
“No.”
“Please.”
She almost laughed. The word sounded foreign in his mouth.
“I came with the floral crew.”
The floral crew had vanished into the service hallway. Leah could not blame them. Their company, Verdant House Events, depended on Halcyon contracts. Standing too near her could be interpreted as choosing a side.
“I’ll arrange transportation,” Julian said.
“I can arrange my own.”
She put the receipts back into the satchel, then the lipstick, scissors, pins, keys, and locket. The young server handed her a prescription bottle that had rolled beneath the banquet table. Rosa’s name was still printed on it. Leah had kept the empty bottle because it held three emergency sewing needles and a folded ten-dollar bill.
The server did not look at the label.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded.
Julian followed her toward the ballroom doors. Eleanor took two steps after him.