Chapter 6
Officer Daniels stepped forward, unbuttoning his duty belt, his expression stern and unyielding. "David Bennett?"
"This is ridiculous!" David held his hands up, backing into the dessert table again. "I haven't done anything wrong! This is a domestic disagreement between a husband and wife! Officer, my mother was just disciplining the boy!"
"Disciplining?" Officer Daniels looked down at Leo’s face, where the red imprint of Evelyn’s fingers was already darkening into a deep purple hematoma. "Sir, I have the hotel security surveillance feed right here on my terminal. Your mother struck this child with enough force to cause cranial trauma against a marble fixture. That is felony child abuse."
"Felony?" Evelyn gasped, her hand flying to her throat, her diamonds trembling. "I am Evelyn Bennett! My late husband was the deputy commissioner of public works! You cannot arrest me!"
"Ma'am, turn around and place your hands behind your back," the second officer said, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his belt.
"No! David, do something!" Evelyn screamed, backing toward the terrified guests. "David, tell them who we are! Call Mayor Langston! Call him right now!"
"Mayor Langston revoked your husband's honorary pension two years ago, Evelyn," Carter Vance noted dryly. "And as for you, David... the district attorney's financial crimes unit has just unsealed an indictment for grand larceny, identity theft, and corporate fraud."
David’s knees buckled. He grabbed the linen tablecloth to keep from collapsing, pulling down a crystal bowl of strawberries that smashed across the floor in a sticky crimson puddle. "Laura... please. Look at me. We have a child together. Think of Leo! Do you want his father to go to prison?"
Laura looked at him. For four years, she had looked at this man with love, then with confusion, then with desperate hope that the gentle man she had married would return. But looking at him now, sprawled among the broken glass and spilled fruit, she saw only an empty, cowardly shell.
"Leo doesn't have a father, David," Laura said, her voice steady and clear. "He has a sperm donor who watched his mother beat him and worried about his social standing."
"I was stressed!" David sobbed, tears finally breaking through his cowardice. "The debts were crushing me! The loan sharks from the marina were threatening to break my legs if I didn't pay the interest by Friday! I didn't have a choice!"
"Loan sharks?" Brenda shrieked, backing away from her brother as if he were carrying the plague. "David, what loan sharks? What did you do with the money from the trust?"
"He gambled it, Brenda," Laura said plainly. "At the private tables in Atlantic City. Three hundred thousand dollars on baccarat in forty-eight hours last month."
Brenda turned her gaze toward Mark, her eyes wild with despair. "Mark... Mark, look at me. We can still do the ceremony. The priest is in the garden. We can sign the register, we can move into your apartment, we can forget all of this—"
Mark looked at Brenda’s seventy-thousand-dollar dress, then at the scattered receipts, then at the police officer snapping handcuffs around Evelyn’s wrists.
"The wedding is off, Brenda," Mark said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
May you like
"No! Mark, no!" Brenda wailed, dropping to her knees, clutching the hem of his trousers. "You can't do this to me! All our friends are here! The press is waiting outside!"
"Let them wait," Mark said, kicking his leg free from her desperate grasp. "I’m not marrying into a family of thieves and child abusers."
