Chapter 5 - The Face of the Dead
I walked down the grand center aisle of the Pierre Ballroom, my midnight-black diamond gown shimmering like a dark constellation against the gold-leaf walls.
Every breath in the room ceased in an instant.
Governors dropped their champagne flutes; corporate titans froze with their forks suspended mid-air; socialites clutched their pearl necklaces in visceral shock.
Jaxson Vance’s charming smile froze on his face, his eyes widening until the red veins were visible from ten paces away.
He stared at me, his brain violently short-circuiting as he tried to reconcile the filthy waitress on the diner floor with the untouchable empress walking toward him.
“No…” Jaxson stammered, the crystal flute slipping from his trembling fingers and shattering against the hardwood dais.
“That’s… that’s impossible…”
Bianca took an involuntary step backward, her hand flying to her mouth as her face turned the color of damp chalk.
“Jaxson…” Bianca shrieked in a horrified whisper.
“That’s… that’s the girl from the diner!”
“Look at her face!”
“Look at her neck!”
The whispered murmurs among the seven hundred guests exploded into a deafening roar of recognition.
“The Eye of Babylon…” the Chairman of Morgan Stanley whispered, his hands trembling as he stared at my sapphire necklace.
“That necklace belonged to Julian Sinclair!”
“Is that… Maya Sinclair?!”
“The lost heiress who vanished five years ago after the aerospace crash?!”
I stopped at the foot of the elevated stage, looking up at Jaxson Vance with eyes that held the cold, ancient darkness of an open grave.
The room fell into an absolute, agonizing silence where only the faint hum of the air conditioning could be heard.
I tilted my head slightly, letting the stage spotlights illuminate the razor-thin surgical suture on my split lower lip.
“Good evening, Jaxson,” I spoke, my voice melodic, calm, and amplified through the ballroom’s acoustic design to reach every ear in the building.
“I believe you left twenty dollars on my face this afternoon.”
“I came to return your tip.”
I reached into my diamond-encrusted clutch, pulled out the crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and tossed it effortlessly into the puddle of spilled champagne at his feet.
Jaxson’s knees trembled so violently that he had to grab the mahogany podium to keep from collapsing on stage.
“Maya…” Jaxson choked out, sweat breaking across his forehead in heavy streams.
“You’re… you’re supposed to be hiding in the dirt…”
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“I was never hiding in the dirt, Jaxson,” I said, stepping up the three stairs of the dais with absolute majesty.
“I was merely waiting for you to build your empire high enough so that your fall would break every bone in your body.”
