Chapter 4
The tablet screen flashed.
*Blair. The dermal readings from this morning showed localized bruising on your right bicep. Did he strike you?*
Gabriel’s question was clinically framed, but the cadence of the text carried that familiar, barely contained simmer.
I touched the faint red mark where Felix’s fingers had dug in.
*Minor contusion,* I typed. *Grip mark. Under two centimeters. Visual upload complete. Do not intervene, Gabriel. It’s an open-and-shut battery charge for the criminal referral after the trust dissolves.*
A long pause hung on the line. The typing indicator pulsed three times, disappeared, then returned.
*You shouldn't have to carry the physical cost of his destruction, Blair.*
My chest tightened, a strange, sweet ache spreading beneath my ribs.
Felix had touched me only with violence or cold condescension. In twelve months of marriage, he had never once looked into my eyes to see who lived behind them.
Gabriel had never touched me without my permission. In the few clandestine meetings we had stolen—in the soundproofed back room of an art gallery in Chelsea, or during a five-minute window at a symphony benefit—Gabriel had stood beside me like a mountain of quiet reverence. He would hand me a dossier, his fingers brushing mine with an electric, breathless precision, his dark eyes searching my face as though checking for cracks in fine porcelain.
*The cost is negligible compared to the payout,* I replied. *Thirty-five hours. Let him take Vivienne tonight. Let him parade her before Harrington and Kensington. Let the board see the monster unvarnished.*
*I will be there tonight,* Gabriel responded.
I blinked, my fingers hovering over the glass. *At the Metropolitan Club? Felix said you refused the invitation.*
*I accepted thirty minutes ago. I am attending as Chief Trust Protector to deliver the preliminary audit notice. I will be in the gallery by nine o'clock. I want eyes on you.*
A soft, genuine flutter stirred in my stomach.
*Gabriel... if you show yourself too early, Felix might suspect—*
*He won't suspect a thing. Narcissists see only what inflates them. He will think I came to witness his triumph. Dress warmly, Blair. And don't drink anything he pours.*
*I never do,* I whispered to the empty room.
***
The Metropolitan Club on East 60th Street was an altar of gilded-age arrogance. White marble pillars rose forty feet toward coffered ceilings leafed in twenty-four-karat gold; heavy crimson velvet drapes swallowed the winter wind howling off Central Park.
I arrived three steps behind Felix, wearing the dove-grey Dior gown he had mandated. It was deliberately understated, cut with a high, modest neckline that made me look like an unformed girl playing dress-up among giants. My hair was gathered into a low, plain chignon. No diamonds. No rings except for the thin, unadorned platinum band Felix had bought from a commercial jeweler to satisfy the ceremony.
Beside Felix, Vivienne Laurent gleamed like a newly minted coin.
She was draped in emerald satin that hugged every curve, her neck blazing with an antique emerald-and-diamond collar—a piece that had belonged to Felix’s mother. Felix had personally taken it from the family vault this afternoon and fastened it around Vivienne’s throat while I stood by the foyer mirror, holding his cashmere coat.
"Blair, darling," Vivienne had cooed in the limousine, her perfume filling the leather interior with heavy gardenia. "You don't mind that Felix let me borrow this, do you? He said emeralds look terribly gaudy on women with pale complexions like yours. They require... presence."
"Of course not, Vivienne," I had murmured, looking down at my lap with hands folded neatly. "You look very striking."
Felix had laughed—a short, cruel bark of amusement—and rested his hand casually on Vivienne’s bare thigh throughout the entire forty-minute drive into Manhattan.
Now, as we entered the Great Hall of the club, the elite of New York society turned their heads.
The whispering began instantly.
"Is that Felix’s wife?"
"The little Vance girl... she looks half-starved."
"And who is that on his arm? Isn't that Laurent’s daughter?"
Felix navigated the room with practiced swagger, nodding to real estate moguls and venture fund partners. He kept Vivienne tucked firmly into the crook of his right elbow, while I trailed behind like an apologetic ghost.
Whenever an old acquaintance approached, Felix introduced Vivienne with glowing fanfare: "You remember Vivienne Laurent, of course—heading our new renewable energy acquisition in Brussels. A brilliant mind."
When their eyes inevitably slid to me, standing silently at his shoulder, Felix’s expression would cool into polite embarrassment. "And my wife, Blair. She doesn't follow finance much, I’m afraid. She prefers quiet evenings at home."
"How... charming," Lord Harrington rumbled.
The seventy-year-old trustee of the Sterling Dynasty Trust was an imposing man with bushy white eyebrows and eyes like flint. He had known Arthur Sterling for fifty years. He looked at Felix’s arm linked with Vivienne’s, then looked at the bare neck and downturned eyes of Blair Vance.
"Good evening, Lady Blair," Harrington said, deliberately addressing me with an old-world title my father had never possessed.
I curtsied slightly, keeping my shoulders hunched inward. "Good evening, Lord Harrington. The winter air seems unusually bitter tonight."
"Indeed," Harrington remarked, his gaze narrowing on Felix. "Though I find the chill inside certain rooms to be considerably sharper than the weather outside."
Felix’s smile tightened, a flash of irritation flickering across his jaw. "Arthur always said a cold room keeps the mind focused, Harrington. Come, let's take our seats. Dinner is being served."
The private dining room on the second floor was set for thirty.
The seating arrangement had been dictated by Felix himself. He took the head of the long mahogany table. To his right sat Vivienne, laughing at his jokes with theatrical vivacity.
To his left, where the lawful spouse was customarily positioned, Felix had placed an empty chair—reserving it, he claimed, for an overseas sovereign investor who had been delayed.
I was placed three seats down, flanked by a junior compliance officer and an elderly dowager who spent the entire first course explaining her poodle’s dietary restrictions.
It was a public, deliberate insult.
Every member of the Sterling board seated along the table saw it. Mrs. Kensington, a matriarch who held twelve percent of the proxy votes, stared icily at Vivienne’s emeralds, her fork resting untouched beside her plate.
"Felix," Mrs. Kensington said across the crystal centerpieces, her voice carrying over the chamber orchestra playing softly in the corner. "Isn't that the Sterling heirloom parure Miss Laurent is wearing? I was under the impression Arthur willed the family jewels to the mistress of the house."
The table went completely silent.
Vivienne’s smile faltered, her fingers instinctively rising to touch the cold green stones at her throat.
Felix didn't blink. He cut into his dry-aged tenderloin with effortless precision, chewing slowly before lifting his wine glass.
"My father willed the estate to the stewardship of the future, Mrs. Kensington," Felix said smoothly, his eyes flashing with a warning. "Vivienne represents our strategic partnership with the Laurent Group. She wears the jewels as an ambassador of the firm. Blair, as you know, has a far more... simple sensibility. She finds heavy gems distracting. Isn't that right, Blair?"
All eyes pivoted down the table toward me.
