Chapter 4 - The Glass of Champagne
The air in the ballroom felt compressed, as if the atmospheric pressure had dropped five inches in five seconds.
Vanessa Ritchie stood near the edge of the dais, her red dress gleaming under the overhead spot-lights. She held a crystal champagne flute in her hand, half-filled with pale gold liquid. Her face had recovered from the initial shock of Arthur’s entry; her mouth was curved into that practiced, confident smile she used when presenting quarter-end sales figures to board members.
She stepped forward two inches, her high heels clicking on the wood.
“Mr. Vance,” Vanessa said, her voice dropping into a bright, conversational bell that seemed intended to dissolve the tension Arthur had created. “We are all so thrilled you felt strong enough to join us tonight. Jaden was just saying how much the foundation owes to your... historic vision.”
Arthur did not look at her. He placed both hands on the top of his walking stick and looked out over the crowd of two hundred faces—men he had known for forty years, bankers he had saved from bankruptcy during the 1987 crash, judges whose chairs he had endowed at Columbia.
“historic vision,” Arthur repeated softly. The words sounded like iron being dragged over gravel. “A short memory is a very convenient thing in a room filled with free wine.”
Jaden took a half-step onto the dais, his voice dropping into an urgent whisper. “Father, please. Senator Hayes is standing right there. The camera from the Times is rolling.”
Arthur slowly turned his head. He looked at Jaden, then his gaze shifted down to Vanessa Ritchie.
He looked at the double strand of brilliant-cut diamonds around her neck.
“Where did you get that necklace, young woman?” Arthur asked.
The silence in the room tightened until it was almost painful.
Vanessa’s smile flickered. Her hand went instinctively to the diamond clasp at her throat. “This? Oh... Jaden selected it from the family collection for the evening. He felt it matched the... historical significance of the occasion.”
“It belonged to my wife,” Arthur said. His voice was entirely flat. “Eleanor wore it three times in forty years. Once when our first port was dedicated in Baltimore. Once when our son was born. And once when we celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary in this room.”
He looked at Jaden.
“Did you tell her whose neck that belonged to, Jaden?”
Jaden’s face turned from red to a dark, blotchy purple. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Father, it was locked in the safe. It was sitting there doing nothing. Vanessa is representing the new corporate face of Vance Development tonight—”
“She is an employee of a subsidiary we purchased nine months ago for three cents on the dollar,” Arthur interrupted.
Vanessa’s face went white. Her lips pulled thin across her teeth.
She looked around the room, seeing two hundred faces watching her—the Senator’s wife with her hand over her mouth, the Dean of Yale watching with cool, quiet interest from table twelve, the junior directors from Morgan Stanley staring down at their polished shoes.
Her eyes darted to Jaden, expecting him to step between her and the old man.
Jaden stood completely still, his eyes fixed on the mahogany podium, his jaw working silently as if he were trying to remember the lines of a speech he had lost.
Vanessa’s nostrils flared. A sharp, ugly line of bright red appeared on her pale neck as her chest rose and fell with short, shallow breaths.
She turned her eyes away from Arthur and looked across the floor until she found Elena Vance standing near the conservatory doors—quiet, simple in her dark navy lace, holding her silver-edged clipboard.
Vanessa took three slow, deliberate steps toward the edge of the platform, looking directly at Elena.
She raised her empty crystal champagne flute high into the air, holding it between her thumb and forefinger like a dirty piece of trash.
“Elena!” Vanessa’s voice rang out across the silent room, sharp, high, and dripping with an intentional, toxic malice that made three women in the front row flinch. “Bring me another glass of Dom Pérignon! And make sure it’s cold this time, like a good little servant!”
The word servant hit the marble floor like a dropped mirror.
Not one person moved.
The string quartet sat frozen with their bows raised two inches above their violins. The two caterers near the bar stopped with their tongs suspended over the salmon platters.
Jaden Vance stood beside Vanessa. He looked at his wife standing sixty feet away near the glass doors. He looked at Vanessa’s raised glass.
He said nothing.
May you like
Not one word.
He took a slow sip from his Macallan, turned his head toward the garden window, and looked at his own reflection in the dark glass.
