Chapter 7 - The Debutante Ball’s Dead Eyes
Maeve felt the blood entirely evacuate her limbs. Her hands went numb inside her lap.
The entire banquet hall went dead silent. Twenty-five mafia dons and capos turned in their seats to look at the entrance, their forks suspended mid-air.
Standing at the threshold was Sienna Ashford—the woman whose identity Maeve had worn for seventy-two hours, whose clothes hung in the upstairs closet, and whose discarded twelve-carat ring was currently burning like a brand against Maeve’s left finger.
Beside Maeve, Elias did not move a muscle. His right hand remained stationary on the wheelchair’s armrest, the black onyx ring gleaming under the chandelier light.
“Elias!” Sienna cried out, her voice pitching into a dramatic, calculated sob as she strode past the bewildered guards and onto the crimson carpet. “Elias, darling, thank God! I rushed as fast as I could when I heard the rumors!”
Maeve’s breath was trapped in her throat. Her mind raced with terrifying speed. Why is she here? Margaret said she was sent to New York!
Then Maeve saw it: Sienna’s eyes weren't filled with concern. They were darting toward Carmine Moretti and Vincent Russo, taking in the full assembly of Chicago’s wealthiest and most powerful syndicate leaders. Sienna hadn't come to save anyone; she had heard that Elias was hosting the Commission at Blackwood Hall, realized the Marchetti throne hadn't fallen yet, and panicked at the thought of losing her share of the empire.
Sienna stopped ten feet from the head of the table. Her eyes flickered toward Maeve, and a vicious, venomous sneer twisted her perfect features.
“Get away from him, you filthy little thieving tramp!” Sienna shrieked, pointing a manicured finger straight at Maeve’s face. “Do you think putting on my velvet gown makes you an Ashford? Don Elias—this woman is a fraud! She is nothing but my mother’s common South Side maid! Her name is Maeve Donnelly!”
A collective, razor-sharp gasp cut through the Great Hall.
Carmine Moretti dropped his knife onto his porcelain plate with a deafening clatter. He pushed his chair back, a grotesque grin spreading across his wrinkled face. “Well, well, well... what do we have here? A little theater for dessert?”
The North Side and South Side capos began murmuring, exchanging dark, predatory glances. If the Don of Chicago had been tricked by a domestic servant, his credibility was shattered. The Commission would execute him on the spot for sheer incompetence.
Maeve stood frozen. She looked down at Elias.
His face was carved out of absolute granite. He didn't look at Sienna. He didn't look at the whispering mob bosses.
He slowly looked up at Maeve.
In his cold gray eyes, there was no panic. No shock. Only a terrifying, hypnotic challenge.
What will you do, little bird?
Maeve realized in that split second that no one was going to save her. If she admitted the truth, Leo’s medical funding would be revoked before midnight, and both she and her brother would be corpses by dawn.
Something inside Maeve snapped. The terrified, submissive housemaid who had scrubbed toilets and washed bedsheets for the Ashford family vanished, incinerated by the raw, primal fire of a sister fighting for her brother’s life.
Maeve did not step back. She stepped forward.
She walked gracefully around the motorized wheelchair, stopping three paces from Sienna Ashford. Maeve was three inches taller in her heels, her posture rigid and regal beneath the heavy black velvet.
“You’re late, cousin,” Maeve said, her voice dropping into a smooth, icy, utterly dismissive cadence that echoed through the stone rafters.
Sienna blinked, stunned. “C-Cousin? Are you insane?! Elias, look at her! She washes my laundry!”
Maeve let out a soft, pitying sigh, turning her head toward the seated dons with an expression of aristocratic exhaustion.
“My poor, deranged cousin Sienna,” Maeve addressed the room, her tone dripping with effortless condescension. “Ever since the Ashford family cut off her trust fund for her cocaine habit in Manhattan, she surfaces every few months spinning paranoid delusions. First, she claimed she was the rightful heir to the Ashford timber holdings. Now, she crashes an official Commission summit, claiming Chicago’s Don cannot recognize his own betrothed.”
Maeve turned back to Sienna, stepping directly into her personal space.
“You reek of cheap gin, Sienna,” Maeve whispered loudly enough for the first three tables to hear. “And you have embarrassed our family in front of Don Elias for the very last time.”
Sienna’s face contorted with hysterical rage. “You lying little bitch!”
Sienna lunged forward, her polished acrylic nails aimed directly at Maeve’s eyes.
She never touched her.
Before Sienna’s fingers could clear the air, a shadow exploded from the side. Gabriel Ferraro closed the distance in a heartbeat. His gloved hand caught Sienna by the throat in mid-air, lifting her two inches off the marble floor and slamming her backward against the nearest limestone pillar with bone-jarring force.
Sienna choked, gasping for air, her heels kicking uselessly against the stone.
“Gabriel,” Elias’s voice cut through the violence like a scalpel.
Gabriel froze, his iron grip still crushing Sienna’s windpipe, waiting for the command.
Elias touched the control on his armrest. The wheelchair turned smoothly, bringing him face-to-face with the gasping socialite. He tilted his head, his gray eyes colder than the bottom of Lake Michigan.
“I only tolerate one Ashford woman in this house,” Elias said softly, his voice vibrating with absolute lethality. “And she is standing beside my chair.”
Sienna’s eyes bulged with terror as she looked at Elias, finally realizing the horrifying truth: Elias Marchetti didn't care who Maeve was. He had already chosen her.
“Throw this hysterical creature out the front gates,” Elias commanded, waving his hand in dismissal. “And if she or her mother sets foot on North Shore property again, put them both in the river.”
“Yes, Don Elias,” Gabriel grunted. He dragged the sobbing, kicking Sienna toward the side exit like a bag of discarded garbage.
The heavy doors slammed shut behind them.
Maeve stood in the center of the hall, her chest heaving beneath the velvet corset, her hands trembling uncontrollably now that the adrenaline was draining from her veins.
May you like
Elias turned his chair back toward the banquet table. He slowly rotated the black onyx ring on his little finger, his cold gaze sweeping across Carmine Moretti, Vincent Russo, and the rest of the silent, terrified dons.
“Now,” Elias murmured, raising his wine glass toward Maeve. “Where were we, gentlemen?”
