Chapter 1 - The Silence of the Shark
The silence in the Mayfair Grand was not the quiet of a peaceful night,
it was the suffocating,
heavy pressure of a vacuum that had sucked the oxygen out of the lungs of six hundred people.
Sloane Avery stood on that stage,
her blood-red satin dress looking like a fresh wound against the white orchids,
clutching the microphone as if it were a scepter and she were the newly crowned queen of Manhattan.
Her eyes were bright with a manic sort of triumph,
flicking over the crowd to savor the shock,
the horror,
and the delicious scandal she had just birthed into the world.
Preston,
the man I had called my husband for over a decade,
sat beside me as if he had been turned to stone,
his face the color of the expensive linen napkins on our table.
I could feel the heat radiating from his body,
a frantic,
panicked heat that smelled of sweat and expensive cologne,
yet he didn't move a muscle to stop her.
He didn't stand up to defend his marriage,
nor did he stand up to claim his mistress;
he simply sat there,
a coward caught in the headlights of his own making.
Under the table,
my thumb hovered over the "Send" button on my phone,
watching the "Now" message disappear into the digital ether.
I looked at Sloane,
and for a brief moment,
I felt a strange sense of pity for her,
because she truly believed that a man like Preston Hale was a prize worth stealing.
She thought she was taking the king,
not realizing she was merely inheriting a debt that was about to be called in full.
The guests began to recover,
a low murmur beginning to rise like a tide,
the sound of a hundred whispers speculating on my impending collapse.
I could see Mrs. Sterling,
the unofficial gatekeeper of the city’s old money,
leaning over to her daughter and shaking her head with a look of utter disgust.
Sloane didn't care about their disgust,
however,
because she believed that with Preston’s wealth behind her,
she could buy their respect later.
What she didn't understand was that Preston’s wealth was an illusion,
a house of cards built on the foundation of the Hartwell family’s name and credit.
For one hundred and twelve days,
I had watched him funnel money into "investments" that were actually offshore accounts for Sloane.
I had watched him sign documents for the Westbridge expansion,
never realizing that the lawyers reviewing those papers were reporting directly to my brother.
The mistress took another sip of her champagne,
her smile widening as she waited for me to burst into tears or scream in rage.
But the Hartwells do not scream,
we do not provide free entertainment for the masses,
and we certainly do not lose.
The doors at the back of the ballroom creaked open,
the heavy oak portals swinging wide to reveal a silhouette that I knew better than my own.
Mason stood there,
tall and imposing in a charcoal suit,
holding a leather briefcase that contained the death warrant for Preston’s career.
He didn't look at the crowd,
he didn't look at the stage,
he looked only at me,
and he gave a single,
imperceptible nod.
The game was no longer a secret,
the theater was over,
and the real work was about to begin.
I felt a sudden,
cool breeze from the open doors,
and I finally allowed myself to smile,
May you like
a small,
sharp expression that made Sloane’s eyes flicker with the first hint of uncertainty.
