Chapter 1 - THE MIRRORS SHE COULDN’T FACE
Three nights after the winter gala at the Peninsula Chicago, Vincent Cole returned to his penthouse after midnight and immediately knew something was wrong.
Grace had covered every mirror.
The antique mirror she had once loved was hidden beneath a white sheet. The entry mirror had been turned facedown. Brown paper covered the mirrored panel beside the bar. Her dressing mirror was gone entirely.
When Vincent found Grace standing in the dark bedroom in an oversized sweater, she would barely look at him.
At the gala, she had worn a deep blue gown that celebrated every curve Vincent adored. She had entered the ballroom smiling, confident, and warm.
Then Vincent had been called away for forty minutes.
When he returned, Grace had changed.
Now she admitted only one thing.
“I already know what everyone sees.”
Vincent understood violence, betrayal, and threats. Shame was harder. Instead of demanding answers, he promised not to uncover anything she had covered.
But before sunrise, he called Marcus Reed.
“Get me every camera angle from the Peninsula.”
Two years earlier, Grace Miller had been an event planner in Milwaukee. Vincent first noticed her when she stepped between a terrified teenage waitress and an angry state senator.
Grace took blame for something she hadn’t done because, as she later explained, her mother had cleaned hotel rooms for twenty-eight years and had spent much of her life being treated like furniture.
Vincent never forgot that answer.
He began hiring Grace’s company.
Again.
And again.
She eventually confronted him beside the windows of a Chicago hotel.
“There are twenty companies in this city with better connections.”
“Are they better?”
“That wasn’t my question.”
A near smile touched Vincent’s mouth.
What Grace didn’t know then was that Vincent Cole was already becoming fascinated by the woman who noticed everyone in a room except the most powerful man in it.
And what Vincent didn’t know now was that the forty minutes he had left Grace alone at the Peninsula had been carefully planned.
Because someone at that gala had not simply insulted his wife.
May you like
Someone had recorded it.
And by morning, Vincent was about to see exactly what Grace had been trying to forget.
