Chapter 4
The golden reflections shimmered across the silk drapes, framing the tense silence at the head of the table. Alice remained paralyzed, the heavy silver pitcher trembling in her hands. To refuse a gift from the boss's fiancée in front of fifty syndicate capos was an insult that could cost her life. To accept it felt like stepping into a bear trap.
Before Alice could speak, Jamie stepped forward. The six-year-old boy in the charcoal suit moved with bright, innocent enthusiasm. He reached his small hands into the open shoebox resting on the banquet table.
"Let me help!" Jamie announced cheerfully.
He lifted one of the elegant flats by the heel. He moved it directly over an empty silver serving tray resting on the table. With a swift, happy motion, Jamie tipped the shoe upside down and gave it a firm shake.
A loud, sharp clatter echoed over the table.
Dozens of small, jagged, razor-sharp glass fragments fell out of the shoe, cascading heavily onto the silver tray. The broken shards of a shattered wine glass caught the warm fairy lights of the towering Christmas tree, glittering brightly against the metal.
Alice’s breath hitched violently in her throat. The color drained entirely from her fair, rosy face as she stared at the lethal trap that had been waiting for her bare feet.
Jamie set the empty shoe back into the box. He turned his body, looking proudly up at the trembling housemaid.
"Mommy, I took Auntie’s glitter out," Jamie said.
The childish, clear American accent sliced through the ambient noise of the ballroom with the devastating force of a detonating bomb. The word "Mommy" echoed off the cream marble columns, drawing the immediate, shocked attention of every guest nearby.
But it wasn't the title that stopped the room; it was the horrifying reality of the jagged glass resting on the silver tray.
May you like
Damien Ashford stopped moving entirely. His broad shoulders went rigid beneath his dark three-piece suit. He looked at the silver tray, his dark eyes analyzing the sharp, lethal fragments of glass. He processed his son's innocent words. The realization of what had almost happened to the woman standing beside him—and what his son had been handling with his bare hands—cemented itself in his mind.
Damien turned his head. He looked from the silver tray directly into Alice’s terrified, exhausted face.
