Chapter 3 - The Shadow Behind the Glass
Victoria stared at the young maid with eyes wide with incandescent fury.
Her lips parted in a trembling snarl as saliva gathered at the corners of her painted mouth.
Nobody in thirty-five years of pampered privilege had ever dared to lay a single finger upon her flesh.
She pointed a shaking, diamond-encrusted finger straight into Elena’s unwavering face.
Victoria screamed that she would see the girl arrested, blacklisted, and stripped of every penny she possessed.
She vowed to ensure Elena spent the rest of her miserable youth rotting inside a state penitentiary cell.
Elena did not flinch, nor did she retreat an inch toward the safety of the house.
She kept her body positioned like an impenetrable iron shield directly in front of the shaking invalid.
She quietly replied that she would gladly go to prison before allowing a monster to murder an old woman.
The wealthy spectators whispered frantically among themselves, but none dared to approach the confrontation.
Then, the heavy tinted glass doors of the master terrace slid open without making a sound.
The sudden movement froze every whisper in the humid afternoon breeze.
A tall, imposing figure stepped out from the shadows of the mansion into the stark daylight.
Marcus Sterling, the forty-five-year-old shipping magnate and undisputed master of the estate, stood upon the stone landing.
He was dressed from collar to boot in tailored midnight-black, his silver-threaded hair cut razor sharp.
His cold gray eyes swept across the courtyard, instantly absorbing every single detail of the disastrous tableau.
He saw the metallic bat discarded in the grass.
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He saw the bright crimson handprints blazing across his wife’s swollen cheeks.
And he saw the trembling young maid standing guard over the woman who had given him life.
