Chapter 2 - Don’t Take That Glass
The champagne glasses hit the marble floor one after another.
The sound was sharp enough to silence the nearest conversations.
Someone gasped.
Someone laughed nervously.
The orchestra kept playing because professional musicians apparently understood that rich people preferred their disasters accompanied by strings.
The waiter moved.
So did Damian.
I barely saw his hand leave his side before two security men appeared from nowhere.
One blocked the waiter.
The other moved between us and the crowd.
“Kitchen accident,” Damian said calmly.
His hand touched my elbow.
“Walk.”
I stared at him.
“Damian—”
“Walk, Mara.”
There was no panic in his voice.
That almost made it worse.
We moved through the ballroom while security closed around the waiter.
Nobody screamed.
Nobody ran.
Most guests probably assumed a server had embarrassed himself.
Damian guided me into a private corridor behind the ballroom.
The door closed.
His entire demeanor changed.
“Tell me.”
“The tattoo.”
“What tattoo?”
“Inside his wrist. Three lines crossing a circle.”
Damian became absolutely still.
“You’ve seen it before?”
“At the clinic.”
“When?”
“About six months ago.”
“Patient name?”
“He gave a false one.”
“What did he say?”
I hesitated.
“Mara.”
“He said Mercer remembers his own.”
For the first time, I saw something genuinely dangerous enter Damian Cross’s face.
Not rage.
Rage was noisy.
This was calculation.
He took out his phone.
“Luca.”
A pause.
“Alive.”
Another pause.
“Find out what was in the glasses.”
He hung up.
“You’re leaving.”
“What?”
“A driver will take you home.”
“I’m medical support.”
“You were medical support.”
“And now?”
“Now you recognized someone Mercer sent within six feet of me.”
“That seems like a reason to keep me nearby.”
“That is exactly why you’re leaving.”
I folded my arms.
“You brought me here because I notice people.”
“I did.”
“And I noticed someone.”
“You did.”
“So your response is to send me away?”
“My response is to make sure Mercer doesn’t notice you back.”
The sentence silenced me.
Damian stepped closer.
The ballroom lights spilled through the corridor doorway and caught the tiredness around his eyes.
For all the stories about him, I suddenly noticed something nobody mentioned.
He looked exhausted.
“Go home,” he said.
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Nobody probably told Damian Cross no.
I discovered that I enjoyed being first.
“You hired me because I’m a nurse,” I said. “Something was in those glasses. I want to know what.”
“That is no longer your problem.”
“It became my problem when somebody carried it toward me.”
His jaw tightened.
A door opened behind us.
A tall man in a charcoal suit entered.
I recognized him as Luca Moretti, Damian’s head of security.
“He had a small vial taped beneath the tray,” Luca said. “No label.”
Damian’s gaze went straight to me.
“Now will you leave?”
“No.”
Luca coughed suspiciously.
Damian looked at him.
“Something funny?”
“Absolutely not.”
Another man hurried down the corridor holding a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was the vial.
I approached automatically.
Damian blocked me with one arm.
“I said no.”
“And I didn’t touch it.”
I leaned closer.
The fluid was colorless.
“Did any break inside the glasses?”
“One,” Luca said.
“Anyone drink from that tray?”
“No.”
I thought about the waiter’s movements.
“He was watching Damian.”
Luca nodded.
“Obviously.”
“No. Not obviously.”
Both men looked at me.
“He wasn’t watching Damian like someone preparing to attack him.”
“What was he watching?” Damian asked.
“His hands.”
Silence.
I replayed the ballroom in my head.
“The waiter kept looking at your right hand. He was waiting for you to pick up the glass.”
Damian’s eyes sharpened.
“So?”
“So he needed you to choose it voluntarily.”
Luca frowned. “Poison.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“If the goal were simply to kill him, there were easier ways to contaminate a drink.”
Damian stared at me.
“What are you thinking?”
“That maybe whatever was in the glass wasn’t supposed to kill you.”
Luca looked uncomfortable.
“Then what?”
I thought of sedatives.
Cardiac agents.
Drugs that impaired judgment.
Chemicals that created symptoms resembling natural illness.
“I don’t know.”
Damian’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed after three seconds.
“Where?”
A pause.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Lock down the clinic.”
I felt cold.
“What happened?”
He ended the call.
“Someone accessed Crosswell’s private records thirty minutes ago.”
My heart dropped.
“Which records?”
Damian looked directly at me.
“Yours.”
The corridor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
“My personnel file?”
“Your medical access history.”
“Why would Mercer want that?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought of the tattooed patient.
The gala.
The champagne.
My hand tightened around my clutch.
Damian took my shoulders.
“Mara, listen to me.”
His voice had become quieter.
“If anyone contacts you tonight, you answer nobody. You open the door for nobody. You do not return to the clinic unless I tell you.”
“You don’t get to order—”
“Mara.”
Something in his expression stopped me.
Not authority.
Fear.
The most feared man in Boston was afraid.
Not for himself.
For me.
Luca’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
Then at Damian.
“We have another problem.”
“What?”
“The waiter isn’t Mercer’s man anymore.”
Damian frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“He left Mercer’s organization four months ago.”
“Then who sent him?”
Luca slowly raised his phone.
A security photograph filled the screen.
The waiter was entering Crosswell Private Medical.
Yesterday.
Wearing an employee badge.
I stared at it.
“That’s impossible.”
Damian’s voice went cold.
“No.”
His eyes remained on the photograph.
“It means Mercer isn’t outside my operation.”
He looked toward the ballroom.
“He’s already inside it.”
And suddenly the gala no longer felt like an attempted attack.
May you like
It felt like the opening move.
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