Chapter 1 - The Maid Who Stopped the Music
“STOP HER!” Victoria screamed. “She’s not supposed to know that dance!”
The words cut through the ballroom before the orchestra had finished its final note.
Lena Carter stood beneath the chandeliers, one hand still lifted from the last turn. Her black maid’s skirt settled around her knees. Three hundred guests stared at her. At the far end of the marble floor, Alexander Blake had gone so pale that the champagne in his hand slipped between his fingers.
Lena looked from him to his fiancée.
“What did you just say?”
Victoria Royce recovered first. She forced a laugh, but it came out thin. “I said you’re making a fool of yourself. Get off the floor.”
Alexander didn’t move. “Nobody leaves.”
A moment earlier, he had been laughing with his guests. He had called Lena out from the service line, mocked her uniform, and promised to cancel his engagement if she could dance. Victoria had added that the only rhythm Lena knew was the squeak of a mop.
Lena had set down her tray.
“Then clear the floor.”
Now the room was silent.
The waltz had been one her mother used to play on an old piano in a cramped Chicago studio. Lena had not heard it in fourteen years. Yet her feet had remembered every turn. She had danced without thinking, as if Margaret Carter’s hands were still resting lightly on her shoulders.
Alexander came toward her. His tattooed fingers trembled.
“Who taught you that sequence?”
“My mother.”
“What was her name?”
“Margaret Carter.”
The glass in his hand hit the floor.
Victoria’s face drained of color.
Alexander stared at Lena as if she had risen from a grave. “Your mother didn’t die fourteen years ago.”
Lena’s breath caught. “My father told me she did.”
“Your father lied.”
Victoria backed toward the grand staircase. “Alexander, don’t do this here.”
He turned on her. “You will tell her what happened.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Lena stepped between them. “Stop speaking around me. Where is my mother?”
Alexander’s jaw tightened. For the first time since she had entered the Blake estate, the most feared man in Chicago looked frightened.
“Fourteen years ago,” he said, “your mother disappeared after she stole something from my father. Something people have killed to keep hidden.”
“My mother wasn’t a thief.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you let everyone believe she was?”
He looked at the guests, the guards, and the cameras tucked into the gilded corners of the room.
“Because the people who took her are still here.”
A sharp crack sounded from the balcony.
The chandelier above Lena shuddered.
Alexander lunged, caught her around the waist, and pulled her behind a marble pillar as a bullet shattered the mirror where she had been standing.
Guests screamed. Security rushed the balcony.
Alexander held Lena against the cold stone. “Stay behind me.”
She shoved his arm away. “You don’t get to protect me before you tell me the truth.”
He looked at her, and something in his expression changed.
“You’re right,” he said. “But first, we need to get you out alive.”
Then his head of security ran toward them, carrying a small envelope.
“Boss,” the man said. “The shooter dropped this.”
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On the front, written in faded blue ink, were two words.
FOR LENA.
