Chapter 2
Leopold’s gaze did not drop back to his daughter; he kept his eyes locked squarely on his sister.
Verity remained standing by the dessert table, her posture rigid, her chin tilted at an arrogant angle. A faint flush of defiance colored her rosy cheekbones. She still held the teddy bear by one ear, letting its plush limbs swing casually over the polished silver platter of petits fours.
“Leopold,” Verity said, her voice smooth, though her knuckles whitened around the toy’s ear. “Don't be ridiculous. She threw a tantrum before her afternoon nap on Tuesday because she wanted marzipan instead of her broth. I merely wanted her to hear how silly she sounded. It’s called discipline.”
Leopold did not speak. He did not raise his voice, nor did he allow the veins along his temples to throb. The terrifying thing about Leopold Ashbury was his silence—a heavy, suffocating vacuum that preceded violence like the retreat of the tide before a tsunami.
Slowly, Leopold took two steps forward, his overcoat swaying with the movement. He extended his right hand toward his sister, palm upturned, fingers open.
He said nothing. The command was absolute.
Verity’s eyes flashed with petty, venomous rebellion. She had lived thirty-six years believing that the Ashbury name, her share of the family trust, and the public setting of a five-thousand-dollar-a-plate charity gala granted her total immunity. She looked Leopold straight in the eye, her lips curling into a tight, patronizing sneer.
She let her fingers open.
The teddy bear fell to the marble floor.
Before Leopold could reach down, Verity lifted her right foot. The sharp, metallic-tipped heel of her silver shoe came down with brutal, intentional force squarely onto the stuffed animal’s stomach.
CRACK.
The sound of shattering molded plastic was loud and sharp, cutting through the murmuring hum of sixty guests like a gunshot. The miniature circuit board inside the bear’s ribcage splintered into scrap. A dying burr of electrical static rasped from the broken speaker, followed by absolute, dead silence.
Verity lifted her heel and kicked the flattened toy aside against the gilded base of the dessert table. She smoothed the front of her emerald silk gown, smiling directly into the faces of the watching crowd.
“There,” Verity declared lightly, brushing invisible dust from her palms. “Nothing to cry about now. Problem solved.”
Behind Leopold, six feet away, Damon Pike stood like a sentinel. Thirty-eight years old, broad-shouldered and thick-necked in a matte-black security suit, with a coiled acoustic earpiece disappearing into his starched collar, Damon did not move a muscle. His right hand remained lightly clasped over his wrist in front of him, but his pale eyes were scanning every guest in a fifteen-yard perimeter, measuring exits, body language, and threat vectors.
Leopold’s jaw tightened until the bone seemed ready to slice through the skin.
He bent at the waist, picked Cleo up by her ribs with one arm, and set her down two paces behind him. He gently guided her small frame toward his bodyguard.
“Stay with Damon, sweetheart,” Leopold said. His tone to the child was impossibly soft, an incongruous warmth in a voice that had ordered executions.
Cleo immediately pressed herself against the side of Damon’s jacket, her little fingers bunching the dark fabric, her wide eyes terrified.
Verity watched the movement and rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Leo. Don't play the wounded saint. You're spoiling her rotten just to spite me, and everyone in this room knows—”
She took a quick, petulant step forward, reaching out with her manicured arm around Leopold’s shoulder to snatch at Cleo’s sleeve, intending to pull the child back into her demonstration.
“Come here, Cleo, tell your father you were just being a spoiled little—”
Verity never finished the sentence.
Leopold’s left hand struck like an iron clamp, seizing Verity’s outstretched wrist in mid-air. With a single, sharp twist of his forearm, he shattered her grip, wrenching her arm downward so violently that her shoulder dipped.
In the very same fluid motion, before she could even inhale to shriek, Leopold brought his right hand around.
It was not a fist. It was a massive, open-handed slap delivered with the full, concussive torque of his broad back and shoulders.
SLAP.
The sound was thunderous. It echoed off the vaulted glass ceiling and rebounded from the marble walls like a whip cracking inside a tomb.
Verity’s head snapped violently to the side, her pearl-and-diamond earring tearing loose and bouncing across the parquet floor. The sheer momentum drove her three staggering steps backward. Her silver heels caught on the fringe of the velvet bench, and she crashed down onto the cushions, her left hand flying up to cup her face.
Her rosy skin had instantly blanched, replaced on the right side by a furious, swelling scarlet outline of Leopold’s palm and fingers. Her mouth hung slightly open, her breath wheezing through her nostrils in ragged, disbelieving gasps. Her eyes were saucer-wide, shimmering with shock, staring up at her brother as if he had just transformed into an executioner.
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Across the entire conservatory, sixty guests froze in mid-stride. Champagne glasses remained suspended at lips. Waiters stopped with silver trays held in mid-air. The string quartet forty yards away in the main atrium trailed off into an awkward, dying discord.
Nobody breathed.
