Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO REMEMBERED TOO MUCH
By sunrise, the entire thirty-eighth floor of the Grand Hawthorne Hotel had been sealed.
Police officers moved through the suite while forensic technicians photographed the shattered mirror, the bullet hole, and every piece of broken glass. Outside, helicopters circled the building. News vans crowded the street below.
I sat on a velvet chair wearing Tristan’s robe, my knees pulled against my chest.
No one had allowed me to leave.
No one had told me what was happening.
The memory card sat inside a small evidence bag on the coffee table. It looked harmless. It was no bigger than my thumbnail.
But everyone treated it like a bomb.
Tristan stood near the windows, dressed in black trousers and a clean white shirt. He had a cut on his cheek from the shattered television screen. The wound made him look less like a billionaire and more like the dangerous man people whispered about at exclusive parties.
Marcus Vale stood behind him with folded arms.
“You can’t keep her here,” Marcus said.
“She’s safer here than anywhere else.”
“She’s the target.”
“She’s also the only witness.”
I looked at them.
“Witness to what?”
Tristan turned toward me.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
The detective assigned to the shooting entered the room. She was a short woman in her forties with sharp eyes and a navy coat.
“I’m Detective Lena Ortiz,” she said. “Miss Hart, I need to ask you a few questions.”
“I’ll answer whatever I can.”
“Start with dinner.”
I closed my eyes.
The room smelled like coffee, gunpowder, and expensive flowers.
“I was assigned to take notes during the acquisition meeting. Mr. Cain was meeting with the board of Holbrook Maritime. We were discussing the purchase of their shipping division.”
“How much was the deal worth?”
“Four-point-eight billion dollars.”
Detective Ortiz raised an eyebrow.
“And you were present because?”
“I’m his executive assistant.”
“Were you drinking?”
“I had champagne.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus glanced at Tristan.
I saw it.
The doubt.
They believed I had gotten drunk, slept with my boss, and somehow become connected to an assassination attempt.
I felt heat rise in my face.
“I don’t normally drink,” I said.
Detective Ortiz nodded. “Did anyone pressure you?”
I remembered a woman with platinum hair.
“Maybe.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. She was at the dinner. Tall. Silver dress. A diamond necklace.”
Tristan’s face changed.
“Vivian Rusk.”
I looked at him.
“Who is she?”
“My chief financial officer.”
“Why would your CFO drug me?”
“I didn’t say she did.”
“But you knew exactly who I meant.”
Tristan crossed the room.
“Vivian was sitting across from you during dinner. She left twenty minutes before the rest of us.”
“Did she give me something?”
“I don’t know.”
Detective Ortiz looked at Marcus.
“Security footage?”
“Being reviewed,” he said.
“Review it faster.”
Marcus did not react well to being ordered around, but Detective Ortiz seemed immune to intimidation.
A technician entered carrying a laptop.
“We recovered footage from the elevator lobby and hallway,” he said. “The suite’s internal cameras were disabled for approximately forty-two minutes.”
“By whom?” Tristan asked.
“That’s the problem. The system says the cameras were shut down using Mr. Cain’s executive authorization.”
I stared at Tristan.
“You disabled the cameras?”
“No.”
“Someone used your authorization,” Marcus answered.
“How?”
“Your biometric access was copied.”
Tristan’s eyes sharpened.
“Show me the footage.”
The technician connected the laptop to the television. The first clip showed me leaving the dining room.
I was unsteady, laughing at something someone had said. A man walked beside me with one hand hovering near my elbow.
I recognized him.
“Ethan,” I whispered.
Tristan’s executive driver.
Ethan Cole had picked me up from the hospital two nights earlier after my mother’s surgery. He was quiet, polite, and always wore dark suits.
“What is he doing with me?” I asked.
The footage showed Ethan guiding me into the elevator.
Then Vivian appeared behind us.
She looked directly at the camera.
Her face was calm.
Too calm.
She reached into her purse and pulled out something small. A glass vial.
My stomach turned.
The video cut to the presidential suite hallway.
Ethan brought me to the door.
Vivian followed.
Then the footage went black.
Nobody spoke.
Detective Ortiz looked at Tristan.
“Your people brought her here.”
Tristan’s jaw flexed.
“Why?”
The next clip began forty-two minutes later.
Vivian left the suite alone.
Ethan followed five minutes after her.
I was nowhere in the footage.
Tristan turned to Marcus.
“Find them.”
“Already trying.”
“Try harder.”
I watched the screen, my mind filling with broken fragments.
The silver dress.
The vial.
A hand pressing against my mouth.
A voice whispering, “Don’t fight it. You’ll only make it worse.”
I stood abruptly.
“I remember.”
Everyone turned.
The memory came like a wave.
I was in the suite bathroom.
Vivian had been holding a glass of water.
She told me I was sick.
I had refused it.
Then she had slapped me.
Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to shock me.
“You stole from us,” she had said.
I remembered struggling.
I remembered the bathroom mirror.
I remembered reaching for the sink.
Then a black-haired man had entered behind her.
He wore a silver ring shaped like a serpent.
He had looked at me and said, “The drive. Where is it?”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“What drive?” Tristan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me everything.”
“The man asked where it was. Vivian said I had taken it from your office.”
“I’ve never given you a drive.”
“I know.”
“What happened next?”
I shook my head.
“I said I didn’t have anything. Then he told Vivian to make me remember.”
Tristan stepped closer.
“Did he hurt you?”
I looked at the floor.
“My head hurts. I think he hit me.”
Something dark crossed Tristan’s face.
Detective Ortiz noticed.
“Mr. Cain, I suggest you let the police handle this.”
“I am letting you handle it.”
“Then stop looking like you’re about to execute someone.”
Tristan did not respond.
My phone vibrated again.
This time, the message contained a photograph.
My mother asleep in a hospital bed.
The image had been taken from inside her room.
Beneath it were four words:
YOUR BOSS CAN’T SAVE HER.
I dropped the phone.
Tristan picked it up.
For the first time since I had met him, fear entered his eyes.
“Marcus,” he said, “get a team to St. Vincent’s.”
“I’m going with you,” I said.
“No.”
“My mother is there.”
“It’s a trap.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t understand what these people are capable of.”
I stepped toward him.
“My mother raised me alone. She worked two jobs so I could finish college. If someone is threatening her because of something I supposedly stole, I am going.”
Tristan stared at me.
Then he looked toward the shattered window.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
May you like
He picked up his coat.
“And that is exactly why I’m coming.”
