Chapter 6: The Interception
The silence in the grand ballroom was absolute, broken only by the distant patter of rain against the high stained-glass windows. Julianne’s hand remained half-raised, her manicured fingers trembling slightly as Dominic stopped inches from where I stood. The sapphire brooch gleamed dully from the velvet pouch Julianne had pressed into my pocket only minutes before, now resting in Dominic’s large, scarred palm. He hadn’t taken it from my pocket himself; he had intercepted Julianne’s hand before she could retrieve it in front of the press.
“Dom,” Julianne recovered quickly, her voice dropping into an intimate, wounded cadence designed for the nearest society columnist. “The girl was caught red-handed. We can't have thieves under our roof. It reflects poorly on the foundation.”
Dominic didn’t look at her. His gaze remained locked on me, searching my face for the panic Julianne had so carefully engineered. When he found only a steady, exhausted defiance, a muscle twitched in his jaw. He turned slowly toward the crowd, his broad shoulders blocking Julianne from view.
“There has been a mistake,” Dominic’s voice carried through the cavernous room, devoid of warmth but carrying the absolute authority of a man who owned the ground everyone stood on. “The brooch was placed in her possession as part of an inventory check. My security team authorized it.”
A murmur rustled through the front rows. Julianne’s face lost its color, her cosmetic perfection cracking at the edges. “An inventory check? At ten o'clock at night during a charity auction? Dominic, that’s absurd, everyone saw—”
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“Everyone saw what I told them to see,” Dominic interrupted softly, a quiet menace sliding into his tone that shut her down instantly. He turned back to me, his fingers closing over the velvet pouch with deliberate slowness. “Clara. Return to your quarters. We are finished here.”
I lowered my head, keeping my eyes fixed on the polished marble floor as I slipped past the wall of silent guests. The flashbulbs started popping again, but this time they captured Julianne’s forced, brittle smile as she tried to salvage the evening while Dominic walked away from her, leaving a chilling void in his wake.
