Chapter 3 - The Broken Chandelier
The memory of the music room vanished, replaced by the white-hot, suffocating reality of the ballroom floor.
The third bullet was meant for a six-year-old boy in a navy tuxedo.
Mara lay on the cold marble, the scent of gunpowder, copper, and broken crystal filling her lungs with every agonizing breath. The white roses that had decorated the grand tables were now scattered around her head, their delicate petals stained a dark, terrifying crimson.
"Stay with me, Mara. You hear me? You don’t get to die after saving my boy."
Dominic’s voice was right above her now, but it sounded as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep, dark well. His large, scarred hands were pressing down hard on her shoulder, trying to stem the violent torrent of blood that was soaking through her borrowed black dress. His face, usually an unshakeable mask of syndicate control, was completely ruined by a raw, human panic.
"Caleb..." Mara choked out, a dark spray of crimson spilling past her lips. "Is he..."
"He’s safe, Mara. He’s with the security detail in the vault," Dominic growled, his teeth bared as he looked over his shoulder at the chaos of the room. "Victor! Where is the medical transport? If she stops breathing before the ambulance clears the gate, I will personally strip the skin from every man on the perimeter!"
"It’s clear, boss!" Victor’s voice called out from the smoke-filled doorway. "We’ve secured the caterer. It was a Vance contractor out of Chicago."
Mara’s eyes rolled back slightly, the glittering shards of the crystal chandelier above her looking like a field of frozen winter stars. But as the darkness began to narrow her vision, her gaze drifted past Dominic’s shoulder toward the back of the ballroom, near the grand limestone pillars.
The ghost was still there.
He wasn't running. He wasn't hiding his weapon. He stood among the panicked billionaires and fleeing politicians, his tailored gray suit pristine, his handsome face twisted into a sick, triumphant smile as he watched her bleed out on the floor.
Julian Vance.
The man who had spent eight years tracking her across five states. The man who knew that Annalise Brooks was not dead, but was currently dying under the name of a New York maid.
"Annalise," Julian’s lips moved, though no sound carried across the roaring room. He lifted his hand, his fingers mimicking the shape of a gun, and pointed it directly at her heart before disappearing into the thick smoke of the corridor.
"Mara! Look at me!" Dominic roared, his hand catching her chin, forcing her gray eyes back to his face. "Don't you dare close your eyes. You listen to my voice. You brought my son back from the curtains, you don't leave him now."
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Mara tried to speak, tried to tell him about the ledger, about the Vance syndicate, about the three million dollars in offshore funds that her father had left her before Julian’s brothers had turned their Montana ranch into a field of ash.
But the world went entirely white, the sound of Dominic’s desperate commands fading into the long, beautiful silence of the dark.
