Chapter 6
The tension in the ballroom was absolute. The fifty guests sat immobilized, paralyzed by the overwhelming, lethal energy radiating from Adrian Hartwell.
Celia stared back at Adrian, her chest heaving violently beneath her luxurious emerald gown. The silence stretched, tight and unforgiving. She opened her mouth to speak, to scream a denial, to call the maid a liar, but her vocal cords were paralyzed by the sheer terror of the man standing opposite her.
"Are you struggling to find a suitable explanation for my son's terror, Celia?" Adrian finally asked.
His deep, low, measured voice remained completely level. The controlled pause between his words was a calculated instrument of psychological torture. He stood up to his full height, his broad shoulders blocking the light from the crystal chandeliers.
"Adrian, you must understand," Celia gasped, her American accent losing all its polished elegance. "It was a matter of discipline! He refused to sit still for the photographer earlier! I merely needed to maintain order in the household while you were busy!"
"Does maintaining order require locking a six-year-old boy in a windowless room?" Adrian inquired, his perceptive eyes narrowing into cold slits.
"The maid put him up to it!" Celia cried, tears of sheer desperation welling in her eyes. She pointed a shaking, diamond-adorned finger at Nora. "She wants to ruin our evening! She has been filling his head with lies to poison him against me!"
"Would my son fabricate a nightmare to destroy a Christmas dinner?" Adrian asked, his voice echoing coldly off the cream marble columns.
"Yes! He hates me!" Celia shrieked, looking frantically around the room at the seated capos and donors, silently begging someone—anyone—to intervene. "I have tried to make him a proper heir, and he resents me for it!"
"Is that why you have spent the entire day terrorizing the woman who actually cares for him?" Adrian asked, his gaze flicking briefly to Nora’s puffy, crying eyes and her rumpled, disheveled uniform. "Is this what you call discipline?"
Celia swallowed hard, her lies fracturing under the weight of his absolute certainty. "She is a servant! She was overstepping her boundaries! I merely reminded her of her place! You cannot humiliate me in front of our families over a piece of trash and a lying brat!"
"You humiliated yourself the moment you laid hands on those under my protection," Adrian stated, stepping deliberately closer to her.
The word "protection" froze the blood of the guests gathered around the tables. To claim a servant and a child were under his absolute protection elevated them to highly guarded assets of the syndicate.
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"Protection?" Celia spat, her aristocratic features twisting into an ugly mask of pure, unadulterated venom. "You are going to break an alliance that took two years to build over a maid? My father brings the entire southern political network to this table!"
"Are you under the impression that I require your father’s network to maintain my empire, Celia?" Adrian asked calmly.
