Chapter 1 - Three Minutes
The man holding the clippers was still laughing when my husband walked in.
Three minutes earlier, I had been on my knees, collecting handfuls of my own hair from the marble floor.
Six men watched me.
One filmed.
One drank champagne.
Not one of them thought there would be consequences.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Preston Hale said. “Smile. This is going to be hilarious tomorrow.”
My scalp burned. Dark hair clung to my ivory shirt.
Above the bar, the brass clock read 9:57.
I stood, untied my forest-green apron, and folded it.
“Are you finished?”
Preston grinned beneath the soft lights, looking pleased with himself in his emerald velvet blazer.
“My shift ends at ten,” I said. “After that, I’m no longer your waitress.”
He raised his glass.
“Then maybe you should start cleaning.”
For eleven months, the Aether Penthouse had known me as Elena Hayes. Nobody knew about the ring beneath my collar.
Nobody knew I went home to Dominic Vale.
And until that night, I had liked it that way.
I wanted something that belonged to me.
A paycheck I earned.
People who knew my face before they heard my husband’s name.
Dominic had hated the arrangement, but he had respected it.
Now my hair was scattered beneath a birthday cake, and six wealthy men were laughing because I had asked them to stop touching another waitress.
The clock turned to 9:59.
The doors opened.
Every security guard straightened.
Dominic entered in a charcoal overcoat, four men behind him. He saw my face first.
Then my head.
Then the hair.
Something in his expression went completely still.
“Who the hell is that?” Preston asked.
Dominic stopped in front of me.
He touched the hair they hadn’t cut.
“Who did this?”
I could barely get air into my lungs.
Behind me, someone put down a glass.
Someone else slipped a phone into his pocket.
Dominic noticed.
“Leave it where I can see it.”
The man froze.
Preston stood halfway out of his chair.
“Look, we were just messing around.”
Dominic turned.
“Sit down.”
Preston sat.
That was when I realized every person in the room had been capable of stopping this.
They had simply been waiting for someone important enough to make them.
Dominic looked back at me.
“Tell me what you want.”
My throat tightened.
I looked at the six men.
Then at Dennis, my manager, standing safely behind the bar.
“Call the police.”
Dennis moved toward a small security panel.
May you like
Across the room, Mia shouted.
“Elena—he’s deleting the cameras.”
