Chapter 2
“You’ve been a good little wife,” Marcus said. He straightened his tie. “Don’t spoil it now.”
Then he walked out, and the door swung shut, and she stood alone among the coats.
She counted to forty before she followed him. She had learned to count, over the years. Counting was how you kept your face still.
Back in the ballroom, the orchestra had moved into something slow. Marcus stood at the head of the room with his arm around Veronica Hale from his office — his invaluable partner, he called her at dinners, the words sliding over Elena’s head like water off stone. Veronica was laughing at something. Marcus lifted his glass.
“To the people who make life worth living,” he said.
He looked directly at Elena when he said it. He held her eyes while two hundred people drank.
She was standing near the mayor’s table with a glass of champagne she hadn’t touched, and a waiter passed too close and the glass tipped and cold wine ran over her hand and onto the floor and she felt it soak the silk of her gown, and she thought, very clearly:
I am thirty-four years old. I have no money. I have no job. I have no friends. My mother is dead. My father sold me for a debt. And I am standing here in wet shoes, smiling.
Her hand moved to her throat.
The necklace was a choker — a river of small stones, heavy enough that she felt it every time she swallowed. She had worn it for one hour.
Her fingers closed around the clasp and pulled.
It gave. The clasp burst open and the diamonds went everywhere — across the marble, under the tables, into the champagne, a hundred tiny fires scattered across the floor. Someone gasped. Someone else laughed, nervously, thinking it was a joke, some party trick. The orchestra faltered, then stopped. Two hundred faces turned toward her like a single sunflower.
Marcus’s face contorted. She watched it happen in stages — confusion, then disbelief, then a rage so pure it was almost beautiful. His mouth opened.
Elena was already walking.
Her heels had come off somewhere near the dance floor; she didn’t remember deciding to take them off. Her bare feet left wet prints on the marble, small dark commas trailing behind her, the champagne from the spilled glass smeared into strange shapes. Nobody moved to stop her. That was the thing about a room full of powerful people — they were all terrified of doing the wrong thing in front of each other.