Chapter 6 - THE FROZEN TABLE
The silence in the grand ballroom had become absolute.
You could have heard a pin drop on the parquet floor three hundred feet away. Every head at every table was now turned toward the central aisle, staring in stunned disbelief at the tableau unfolding in front of Table One.
Richard Mercer and I stopped directly at the edge of Dominic’s table.
Dominic slowly stood up from his chair. His knees looked stiff, his movements mechanical, as if he were fighting through thick underwater currents. He stared at me—really stared at me—as if trying to peel away the midnight-blue silk and the diamond pendant to find the terrified, obedient woman he had left packing her bags in the penthouse hours ago.
“Evelyn,” he choked out, the name scraping out of his throat like dry sandpaper. “What... what are you doing here? How did you...?”
Vanessa stood up beside him, her face flushed with a mixture of public humiliation and frantic desperation. She grabbed Dominic’s sleeve, her voice rising in a shrill, defensive pitch.
“Dominic, who is this? Why is she crashing our table? Security! Someone get Meridian security over here immediately!”
Not a single security guard moved.
In fact, the two lead Meridian security officers standing near the west doors quietly stepped back, folding their hands behind their backs and looking at the ceiling. They answered to Richard Mercer. They had answered to Richard Mercer since before Dominic Vale bought his first commercial warehouse.
I looked down at Vanessa, my expression completely flat, devoid of any anger or malice. Just cold, clinical observation.
“You might want to check the seating chart again, Miss Quinn,” I said, my voice carrying effortlessly across the silent room. “Table One doesn't belong to the CEO of Vale Holdings tonight. It belongs to the estate that financed every brick of his empire.”
Dominic flinched as though he had been struck across the face.
“Evelyn, stop this right now,” Dominic hissed, his voice dropping into a desperate, furious undertone as he leaned across the table toward me. “Have you lost your mind? Making a public scene like a bitter, hysterical—get out of here before you humiliate yourself completely!”
“Hysterical?” I tilted my head, raising an eyebrow. “Dominic, you told me to pack my things and be gone by morning. I simply decided to take your advice. I packed my things... and I brought my attorney.”
I gestured gracefully toward Richard.
Richard stepped forward, his granite-hard gaze locking onto Dominic with the terrifying weight of a lion staring down a stray dog.
“Good evening, Dominic,” Richard said smoothly. “I trust you’re enjoying the Meridian Gala. It’s always a lovely party when you’re spending other people’s money.”
Dominic’s eyes darted frantically between Richard and me. The arrogance that had defined him for eight years was completely gone, replaced by the primitive, feral panic of a man realizing he had walked into a slaughterhouse wearing a blindfold.
“This is a private corporate matter,” Dominic stammered, his voice cracking slightly. “Richard, you have no jurisdiction here. Vale Holdings is a publicly traded entity—!”
“Publicly traded, yes,” Richard interrupted, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal baritone that silenced any lingering murmurs in the room. “Which makes it all the more fascinating that forty-eight minutes ago, the federal Department of Justice filed an emergency asset-freezing injunction against every corporate account tied to your name.”
The color vanished from Dominic’s face a second time, leaving him looking ghost-white.
“What... what did you say?” Dominic whispered.
Before Richard could answer, the heavy double doors at the rear of the ballroom swung open once more.
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Four men in dark federal suits walked in, accompanied by two armed U.S. Marshals. They didn't look like gala guests. They looked like an execution squad.
And they were walking straight toward Table One.
