CHAPTER 2 - THE NIGHT THAT BROKE EVERYTHING

POV: Lisa

Ethan’s hand left her mouth.

—Don’t go out, he said.

Lisa went out anyway.

It was not courage. Courage implies thought. What moved her was older than thought: the refusal of the body to remain still when the people it loves are on the other side of danger.

The corridor had filled with guests who no longer looked expensive, only terrified. Diamonds shook at throats. Men in tuxedos shoved past one another. A woman kept repeating no, no, no as if repetition could reverse time.

Lisa followed the panic into the main salon.

The first thing she saw was the marble floor.

The second was the dark stain.

The third was Victor.

Her mind tried to make him into something else. A fallen man. An injured man. A man who would move if someone called his name in the correct tone.

But Victor Elsner lay with the particular stillness sleep never has.

And Ethan stood twelve meters away, staring at his father.

✦

Lisa reached him through the chaos.

—Ethan.

She touched his arm.

—Look at me.

He turned as if her voice had crossed a longer distance than the room.

His gray eyes were open, but something in them had gone far away.

—He’s dead, Ethan said.

The words were almost calm. That made them worse.

—I know.

Lisa tightened her hand around his arm.

—I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

She meant it when she said it.

That was the last innocent sentence of her life.

The investigators moved with cold efficiency, dividing the ballroom into zones, ordering people back, speaking into radios. Procedure had a particular cruelty: once the damage was done, it became very good at organizing the remains.

Lisa stayed beside Ethan and caught the words that slipped between uniforms.

Pistol.

Fingerprints.

Motive.

Then, again, the surname.

Hasse.

She turned so quickly the champagne slipped from her hand and shattered near her feet.

No one looked down.

Her father stood near the far end of the room. Edward Hasse had not run. He had not shouted. His hands were visible at his sides, his face composed in the way only lawyers and condemned men can manage.

He already knew.

Lisa saw it before the handcuffs appeared.

—Dad!

She reached him before the officers did.

Edward looked at her, and for the first time in her life, he looked older than he was.

—I’m fine, Lisa.

—This is a mistake. We need Hamilton. We need surveillance footage. We need to-

—Lisa.

His voice was low, steady, and devastatingly familiar.

—Call Hamilton. Stay calm. Do not do anything impulsive.

—I’m not calm.

—I know. But you have to be.

The officers asked her to step back.

She did not move.

One of them said her name as if she were a problem to be managed. Edward’s eyes held hers.

Step back, they told her without words.

Live long enough to fight this.

So Lisa stepped back.

She watched the handcuffs close around the wrists that had taught her how to hold a pen, how to sign her name, how to build an argument without raising her voice.

Something inside her rearranged itself around one clean thought.

This will not stand.

Then she turned to Ethan.

✦

He was watching her.

Not as her fiance.

Not as the man who had kissed her in a private study less than an hour ago.

As someone suddenly standing on the opposite side of an invisible line.

Lisa crossed the room.

—Ethan.

She took his hands. They were cold.

—My father did not do this.

He did not answer.

—Ethan.

—There is evidence.

—Evidence can be wrong. Evidence can be planted. We need time.

—The weapon has Edward’s fingerprints on it.

—Then someone wanted it to.

His jaw tightened.

—My father is dead.

—I know.

—No.

For the first time, his voice broke its careful line.

—You don’t. Not like this.

The words struck harder because they were true and unfair at the same time.

Lisa stepped closer.

—Then let me stand with you while we find out who did this. Do not let the person who killed your father take us too.

For a second, something moved in his face.

The Ethan she knew. The one who heard her before he defended himself. The one who had once told her that every room became less hostile when she entered it.

Then his eyes flicked toward the place where Victor’s body lay covered. Toward the hallway where Edward had been taken. Back to Lisa.

—I don’t know what I believe.

—Believe me.

—Lisa-

—Not the police. Not the blood. Not the first story they put in front of you.

She held his hands harder.

—Me. Believe me.

Ethan looked down at their joined hands.

Then he released her.

Not roughly.

Deliberately.

That was worse.

Lisa felt the loss of contact like a verdict.

—I need air, he said.

—No. You need to decide whether grief is going to make you cruel.

His eyes lifted.

The room seemed to go quieter around them, though Lisa knew it had not.

—Do not make me choose tonight, he said.

—You already are.

He opened his mouth.

And before Ethan spoke, Lisa knew the sentence would split her life into before and after.