Chapter 3 - The Shattered Flute and the Ghost in Ivory
Dominic’s vision tunneled until the entire grand ballroom—the gilded mirrors, the hundreds of tuxedos, the floral arches—dissolved into an inconsequential blur. There was only the boy. And then, as Dominic forced his staggered gaze to move, the two little girls standing beside their mother emerged with terrifying, mathematical clarity.
He looked at Ava.
She had tucked herself slightly behind Claire’s navy skirt, her small hand clutching the silk, but her face was turned toward the light. She offered a shy, gentle smile toward an elderly woman in the front row who was waving at her. That smile—the subtle, sweet curve of her lips, the high, aristocratic sweep of her cheekbones, and the warm, chocolate-brown depth of her eyes—was the living, breathing portrait of Maria Hale. Dominic’s mother. The matriarch who had died when Dominic was twelve years old, whose oil painting hung above the limestone hearth of the Hale ancestral estate in upstate New York. For twenty-six years, Dominic had believed that face was lost to the earth.
Now, it was smiling at him from the body of a six-year-old child.
Then his eyes shifted to Lily.
The little girl was looking up at the vaulted ceiling, mesmerized by the swinging crystal prisms of the chandeliers. Between her golden-brown eyebrows was that tiny, distinct vertical crease—a stubborn, thoughtful furrow that Dominic’s father had worn until his dying day, the exact same crease Dominic caught in his own reflection every morning when he shaved.
Six years old.
The math tore through Dominic’s mind like a cluster of hollow-point rounds. Six years old. Seven years since she disappeared.
She had been carrying them. When he had screamed at her in the penthouse, when he had thrown her wedding ring onto the marble hearth, when he had looked into her tear-streaked eyes and called her a treacherous whore—she had been carrying his flesh, his blood, the entire future of the Hale dynasty beneath her heart.
A sharp, violent sound shattered the quiet reverence of the room.
CRACK.
Ten feet to Dominic’s left, standing beside a banquet table draped in white orchids, Vanessa Crowe had frozen.
At thirty-five, the socialite was a vision of predatory, calculated glamour. Her golden-blonde hair was sculpted into an elaborate, glossy updo, her lips painted the color of arterial blood, and her slender, athletic figure poured into a backless, fitted evening gown of scarlet red silk. For seven years, Vanessa had hovered at the periphery of Dominic’s empire, subtly positioning herself as the loyal confidante who had helped him uncover Claire’s supposed treason. She had spent seven years waiting for the ice around Dominic’s heart to thaw, waiting for the day he would finally place a ring upon her finger and merge her family’s shipping interests with his sovereign power.
Now, Vanessa’s manicured fingers were trembling with such violent, uncontrollable spasms that her crystal champagne flute had slipped cleanly through her grip.
The glass shattered against the polished marble floor, spewing vintage Dom Pérignon and razor-sharp crystal shards across the hem of her red gown. The sound drew the startled glances of several nearby guests, but Vanessa did not even look down.
Dominic’s head snapped toward her, his instincts firing on raw, lethal instinct.
Vanessa’s face had drained of every drop of color. Her heavy foundation looked like cracked plaster over skin that had turned the sickly, translucent gray of a corpse. Her crimson-painted mouth hung slack, her chest heaving in rapid, panicked gasps beneath her red silk bodice.
She was not looking at the broken glass. She was not looking at Dominic.
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Her bulging, terror-stricken eyes were locked in sheer, unadulterated horror upon the three children standing on the stage.
Vanessa knew the silver ring in the boy’s eyes. She knew the grandmother’s smile on the girl. And most of all, she knew that the grave she had dug for Claire Bennett seven years ago had just cracked open under the chandeliers of the Hawthorne Grand, threatening to drag her down into the dark.
