Chapter 25 - The Poisoned Gala at the Montgomery Estate
Three weeks later.
The Montgomery Cliffside Manor in Newport, Rhode Island, was ablaze with crystal chandeliers and the hushed, predatory murmur of five hundred members of the East Coast elite.
It was the official memorial service for Victoria Montgomery, though it had all the somber reverence of a shark-feeding frenzy. Senators, shipping magnates, European royalty, and international financiers glided across the polished marble floors in black velvet and bespoke tuxedos, sipping vintage Krug and whispering about the carcass of the Montgomery empire.
The rumors were wild: Victoria had died in a yachting accident; Julian had suffered a nervous breakdown; Elena was missing, dead, or institutionalized.
Then the double oak doors at the top of the grand marble staircase swung open.
The grand ballroom went dead silent. The string quartet’s violins faltered, scraping to an awkward halt.
Elena descended the stairs.
She wore a custom floor-length gown of liquid black silk with an open back that proudly displayed the long, healing purple-and-silver scar where the gaff hook had grazed her shoulder blade. Her dark hair was swept up, pinned with antique diamond combs that had belonged to Victoria’s grandmother. On her hand, Victoria’s nineteen-carat emerald signet ring caught the glare of the chandeliers.
She looked magnificent. She looked terrifying. She looked like Victoria Montgomery reborn in youth and iron.
At the foot of the stairs stood Julian.
He looked hollowed out. A pale, manicured corpse in an expensive suit, his eyes rimmed with red, his smile strained to the breaking point. Beside him stood Arthur Sterling, the family’s lead corporate attorney, holding an embossed leather dossier.
"Elena, darling," Julian purred, his voice tight as he stepped forward to offer his arm—a show of matrimonial solidarity for the press cameras flashing at the entrance. "We were worried you wouldn't make the reading of the memorial resolutions."
"I wouldn't miss it for the world, husband," Elena murmured, ignoring his arm and walking directly past him toward the center of the ballroom.
The crowd parted before her like the Red Sea. They had come to feast on the scraps of an orphaned fortune, but the woman walking into their midst did not carry the scent of a victim. She carried the scent of gunpowder and open water.
A white-gloved waiter glided toward her, offering a silver tray bearing two crystal flutes of vintage Dom Pérignon.
"Champagne, Mrs. Montgomery?" the waiter murmured, keeping his eyes respectfully lowered.
Elena paused. Her eyes drifted to the glass. In the golden effervescence of the champagne, she noticed a faint, microscopic swirl of milky iridescence—a separation of density that only someone trained in chemical forensics would recognize.
Aconite. The wolfsbane extract. Victoria’s favorite compound for quiet heart attacks.
Elena looked up, not at the waiter, but across the ballroom to the second-floor mezzanine. Standing in the shadows behind the carved limestone balustrade was a figure in an immaculate charcoal veil, holding a silver cigarette holder between gloved fingers.
The figure tapped the ash, leaned forward into the light, and Elena’s blood turned to liquid nitrogen.
Beneath the black lace veil, the lower half of the woman’s face was covered in a skin-graft compression mask.
May you like
Victoria was here.
***
