Chapter 2 - The Breath in the Velvet
A collective, horrified shriek ripped through the ballroom.
Curled inside the velvet-lined interior of the six-foot chest, lying on his side with his knees drawn to his chest, was five-year-old Leo Hayes.
The little boy was dressed in a miniature navy blazer and gray shorts. His face was a terrifying, dusky blue, his lips cyanotic, his eyelids fluttering with shallow, erratic tremors. A strip of industrial duct tape was secured across his mouth, and his small wrists were bound with black zip-ties. The interior air of the sealed chest smelled of suffocating heat, stale cedar, and chemical ether.
"Leo! Oh God, Leo!" Clara sobbed, collapsing over the rim of the box.
Her bloody fingers caught the corner of the duct tape, peeling it away with frantic, trembling care.
Victoria reached in, pulling a pair of diamond-crusted corsage shears from the floral basket beside the altar, cutting cleanly through the plastic zip-ties binding the child's wrists.
"He's in respiratory arrest!" Victoria screamed, pulling the little boy out of the velvet lining onto the marble floor.
Victoria had spent four years working as a certified pediatric trauma nurse at Northwestern Memorial before her family arranged her courtship with Alexander. She ripped off her cathedral veil, tore away the lace collar of her gown, and dropped onto her knees beside the child.
She tilted Leo’s head back, checked his carotid artery with two steady fingers, and clamped her mouth over his small lips, delivering two rescue breaths into his oxygen-starved lungs.
One. Two.
She placed the heel of her palm over his sternum, delivering five rapid, rhythmic cardiac compressions.
One, two, three, four, five.
The little boy’s chest convulsed.
A sharp, wet gasp tore from Leo’s throat. He coughed violently, his small lungs pulling in the cool air of the ballroom with ragged, hitching sobs. His fluttering eyelids opened, revealing deep, golden-flecked amber eyes that stared straight up into his mother’s face.
"Mommy...?" Leo whimpered, his tiny hands reaching out blindly, his fingers locking into the rough orange fabric of Clara's prison jumpsuit. "The dark box... Daddy said if I made a sound, you would never come back from the hospital..."
Clara pulled her son against her chest, wrapping her arms around his shivering frame, burying her face into his soft dark hair as racking, unrestrained sobs shook her entire body.
"I'm here, Leo," Clara wept, rocking him on the marble steps. "Mommy’s here. You are completely safe now, baby. Nobody is ever putting you in the dark again."
Victoria stood up slowly.
Her pristine ivory gown was smeared with Clara’s blood and dust from the floorboards, but her posture was straight as a drawn saber.
She turned her head, looking down at Alexander Hayes where he lay pinned to the marble under Agent Vance’s knee.
Alexander looked up at her, blood leaking from his split lip onto his bespoke white shirt, his voice cracking in desperate, pathetic panic. "Victoria... please... listen to me! She’s an escaped felon! The boy was an illegitimate complication from a surrogate arrangement—I did this to protect our future! I did this for the Langford merger!"
Victoria walked over to him.
She slipped the four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring from her left hand.
May you like
She did not hand it to him. She dropped the ring onto his bleeding cheek with the cold, absolute contempt of an empress discarding a diseased insect.
"You are not a man, Alexander," Victoria whispered, her voice carrying cleanly across the silent room. "You are a monster. And I am going to make sure your name is erased from this city."
