Chapter 5 - The Bridge in the Rain

Elena had always thought the report about Marcus's crash was an insult to his memory. It described a reckless speed he never drove and a broken taillight he had replaced the week before. But grief makes people tired. Victor had handled the funeral arrangements, hired lawyers, persuaded Elena to sign the last insurance forms. He'd called it kindness.

Now she remembered his face when she asked to see the traffic camera footage. Not sad. Annoyed.

"We need witnesses," Elena told Tessa. "And we need to keep those files intact. No editing, no sending pieces that someone can call fake."

The first officers arrived by the service entrance. Detective Rowan Pierce, a compact woman in a navy blazer, listened as Elena explained the confinement, the threats, and Marcus's recording. She took Tessa's statement separately, photographed the damaged phone, and requested a preservation hold on the hotel's surveillance footage.

"You have enemies with money," Pierce warned. "That doesn't mean we can't build a case. It means the details matter."

Back upstairs, Celia stood on the ballroom balcony beneath a painting of dead aristocrats. In cream silk and diamonds, she looked like someone who would never raise her voice because other people had always raised theirs for her. Victor stood beside her with an ice pack pressed to his knee.

"My wife assaulted me," he announced when the officers entered. "Everybody saw it."

Elena felt thirty-eight pairs of eyes shift toward her again. She looked at the guests who'd watched him take the first swing. "Then tell them what you saw," she said.

Nobody spoke.

A woman in a pale blue gown lowered her champagne glass. "I saw him attack first." Her voice shook, but she said it again, louder. "Victor struck at her. Three times."

Another guest nodded. Then a third.

Victor's expression hardened. "You don't know what you're involving yourselves in."

"Neither did my brother," Elena said, "until he tried to stop you."

Detective Pierce held up a hand. "Mr. Ward, don't threaten witnesses."

A hotel technician hurried through the crowd with a tablet. "Detective? Someone's wiping the security feeds right now. The deletion started from the executive office."

Pierce turned to her team. "Secure that room. Now."

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And Celia, for the first time all evening, looked afraid.

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