Chapter 6
The silence in the grand dining hall stretched taut, a physical weight that pressed down upon the seated guests. The bright, airy colors of the room felt suddenly stark, exposing the raw, underlying brutality of the situation.
Holden remained perfectly still, his tailored dark suit acting as an impenetrable wall between his blood-soaked past and the woman who had orchestrated it.
"Holden, darling, please," Lenora stammered, her American accent trembling uncontrollably. She took a stumbling step backward, her high heels catching on the thick patterned rug. The sculpted satin of her evening gown seemed to lose its luster. "He is lying! The old man is senile! His mind is completely gone! I only spoke to him because he was harassing the estate for more money!"
"Do you believe my memory is as frail as the man you terrorized?" Holden asked. His deep, low voice rolled through the quiet room, the measured pauses striking like a physical blow.
"I didn't do anything!" Lenora shrieked, her voice pitching up into a hysterical, defensive frequency. She pointed a shaking, diamond-clad finger at Daphne. "She put him up to this! The maid! She hates me! She wants to ruin this dinner to make me look like a monster in front of your friends!"
"Does a housemaid possess the authority to empty a casket before it goes into the earth, Lenora?" Holden inquired, his cold, perceptive eyes dissecting her false narrative with surgical precision.
"You can't believe them!" Lenora insisted, tears of panic and frustration finally spilling over her fair cheeks, ruining her pristine makeup. "She drowned! You saw the reports! The Coast Guard confirmed it! I loved her! I loved her like a sister!"
"Does love require a woman to seal an empty wooden box and threaten the man digging the hole?" Holden asked smoothly.
He didn't wait for her pathetic, scrambling answer. He took a slow, deliberate step toward the center of the table. The refined artistic tattoos on his hands flexed as he rested his palms on the polished walnut wood.
"Did you truly believe you could orchestrate the disappearance of my wife, bury a lie in my family plot, and seamlessly ascend to my side without consequence?" Holden questioned, his voice dropping into a register of pure, concentrated ice.
Lenora opened her mouth, her breath catching audibly in the quiet room. She looked at the towering, deeply masculine Mafia boss, realizing that the formidable intellect she had so arrogantly underestimated had just trapped her perfectly.
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"My father will not stand for this insult," Lenora whispered, genuine, unadulterated fear finally bleeding into her eyes as she attempted to leverage her family's political weight.
"Will your father truly care for an insult when he learns his daughter is responsible for the assassination of a boss's wife?" Holden asked softly.
