Chapter 5
The heavy doors clicked shut, plunging the vast, luminous dining hall into a profound, ringing silence. The golden light continued to cascade over the abandoned fine porcelain and half-empty crystal wine glasses. The opulent space, designed for celebration, now felt like a gilded interrogation chamber.
Odessa backed away from the head table, her heels clicking unsteadily against the polished floor. She wrapped her arms around her waist, a defensive posture that crushed the sculpted satin of her expensive gown. Her diamond earrings shook as she wept, her carefully constructed facade entirely destroyed.
"Keaton, you cannot believe this is real," Odessa sobbed, her chest heaving. "My family arranged this marriage! We are supposed to unite our syndicates! Are you going to throw all of that away because of a misunderstanding and a lying maid?"
Keaton stood immovably in his tailored dark three-piece suit. He slowly crouched down, bringing his handsome, angular face level with his daughter’s.
"Can you tell me exactly what you saw at the graveyard, Willa?" Keaton asked gently, his deep, low voice softening significantly to comfort the young girl.
Willa sniffled, rubbing her nose with the back of her small hand. She looked at Audra, who gave her an encouraging, tearful nod, before looking back into her father's cold, but loving, eyes.
"You walked away to talk to the men by the cars," Willa explained, her voice trembling but remarkably clear. "I stayed by the hole. Odessa came to get me. Then we heard the knocking. It was coming from inside the box. I told her Mommy was awake. Odessa grabbed my arm so hard it bruised. She told the men with the shovels to bury the box faster. She said if I ever told you, she would put me in a box, too."
Odessa let out a blood-curdling scream of denial. "She is lying! The maid told her to say that! She has been stealing information and trying to frame me for it!"
Keaton rose slowly to his full height. He turned his broad, powerful shoulders toward his fiancée. The extremely short stubble on his jawline seemed to bristle with barely contained violence.
"Would Audra risk her life in this room to manufacture such a claim?" Keaton asked.
"Yes!" Odessa shrieked, pointing viciously at the housemaid. "Look at her! She thinks she's better than me just because she plays the innocent victim!"
Keaton didn't look at Audra. He kept his perceptive eyes locked entirely on Odessa, dissecting her panic, reading the absolute guilt written plainly across her flushed, rosy skin. He had survived in the criminal underworld by being an unparalleled judge of human character. He knew when someone was lying to him, and he knew the awful, crushing weight of the truth.
"Are you capable of telling the truth, Odessa, or must I extract it from you?" Keaton asked, taking a slow, deliberate step toward her.
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"I love you, Keaton!" she wept, falling to her knees on the luxurious rug, the sculpted satin of her gown pooling around her. She clasped her hands together in a begging gesture. "Please, darling! My father forced me to do it! He said Marianne was standing in the way of the merger! He gave her a drug to slow her heart! I didn't know she would wake up in the dirt!"
"Did you believe that listening to my wife suffocate would secure your place at the head of this empire?" Keaton asked, his voice dropping to a terrifying, gravelly whisper.
