Chapter 4 - THE THREAT ON THE SCREEN
The silence returned to the ballroom like a heavy tide, but the atmosphere had subtly altered. The crooked white flower remained embedded in the dark chocolate cake, its bruised petals glowing gold in the light of the thirty burning candles. Rowan sat alone at the head of the long table, his eyes fixed on the door through which the child had vanished.
Suddenly, a sharp, buzzing vibration rattled across the hard surface of the mahogany table.
Rowan’s personal phone—a sleek, black, heavily encrypted device—was buzzing repeatedly against the polished wood. The screen lit up with an incoming text notification from an untraceable, burner origin.
Rowan reached out his broad hand and picked up the phone. He slid his thumb across the glass to unlock the display. He read the text message once. Then twice.
He did not gasp or curse. His body did not tense violently. Instead, his entire countenance underwent an immediate, terrifying transformation. The brief, human softness that Piper had unlocked vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, lethal stillness that was far more dangerous than open rage. The grey in his eyes turned to slate; his jaw set like iron.
A heavy step sounded from the shadow of a nearby marble column.
Finley, Rowan’s oldest and most trusted chief of security, stepped into the golden light of the chandeliers. Finley was in his late forties, a massive, broad-shouldered man wearing a dark tailored suit that barely concealed the tactical holster beneath his jacket. His hair was cropped short and silvering at the temples, his face calm and vigilant—the face of a man who had stood beside Rowan through a decade of street wars and corporate takeovers.
Finley stopped two paces beside Rowan’s wheelchair, his eyes scanning the room before settling on his boss.
"What is it?" Finley asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
Rowan did not turn his head. He placed the black phone face down on the table beside the untouched cake. He looked out across the long expanse of the room—at the thirty empty mahogany chairs, the pristine silver, the burning candles, and the vast, hollow space where thirty of Boston's most powerful crime bosses and politicians were supposed to be sitting tonight.
"Find whoever scared everyone out of this room," Rowan said softly.
The words were spoken in a quiet whisper, but they carried the force of a death warrant. The empty chairs were not an insult born of disrespect; they were the result of a coordinated, calculated move by an enemy who had managed to intimidate or threaten thirty high-level figures into breaching their pacts with the Frost.
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Finley nodded once, his expression hardening instantly. "On it."
He turned his broad frame around and began walking with heavy, purposeful strides toward the ballroom exit to mobilize their tactical teams.
