Chapter 2: The Tightened Grip
For three agonizing seconds, the noise of the gala seemed to evaporate, leaving only the sharp hum of the gallery lights and the heavy, metallic scent of champagne in the air. Celeste’s wrist felt rigid beneath my fingers, the skin cool and unyielding beneath her heavy perfume. Her diamond tennis bracelet dug into my palm with prickly sharpness, a physical reminder of the gulf between the people who owned this city and the people who cleaned up after them.
Celeste didn’t pull away immediately. Instead, she let her gaze travel slowly down from my face to the dark blue fabric of my attendant dress, lingering insultingly on the white collar and the small plastic name badge pinned to my chest. When her eyes snapped back up to mine, they were narrowed to venomous slits. Her jaw tightened until the skin around her mouth turned stark white.
"Do you know who I am?" Celeste asked, her voice dropping into a low, vibrating hiss that carried an icy authority honed by decades of country clubs and boardrooms.
She expected me to shrink back. She expected the uniform to do its work—to remind me of my place at the bottom of the museum’s hierarchy. In any other circumstance, the sheer social weight of her question might have worked. But out of the corner of my eye, I could still see Eleanor Vale sitting motionless in her silver wheelchair, her head bowed just enough to hide the sudden, vulnerable tremor in her chin. That small detail kept my fingers locked around Celeste's wrist.
"I know you're a guest in this museum," I replied, keeping my tone level, stripped of any trembling deference. "And my job is to protect the people inside it."
Celeste’s chest rose and fell in a sharp, shallow breath. Her expression morphed from sheer disbelief into a cold, lethal sort of wrath. She wasn't used to being challenged, let alone by a twenty-five-year-old museum attendant making minimum wage. Before she could gather the breath to summon security or scream for the museum director, a shadow fell across the polished marble floor between us.
May you like
A man stepped into our immediate circle. Adrian Mercer moved with a quiet, effortless authority that immediately silenced the whispers of the two tuxedo-clad couples standing nearby. At sixty, his silver-white hair was swept back neatly, and his sharp black tuxedo fit him with tailored precision. He didn't raise his voice, nor did he look hurried. He simply placed one hand inside his jacket pocket and tilted his head, looking between Celeste’s trapped wrist and my steady grip.
"The question," Adrian said calmly, his deep voice carrying a quiet weight that commanded the space around him without shouting, "is whether you know who she is."
