The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 810

Patricia took the microphone as if it had always been hers, and smiled out over the room, sweet as sugar on a knife.

"Thank you, Grandmother. Thank you, Ms. Vale. The House of Tiffany has made perfume on this coast for three hundred years, and I promise you, Halcyon will never regret it. And my poor cousin will make anything Halcyon asks for. Anything at all. She works for me now."

She laughed lightly. "So you see, Ms. Vale, you get both of us. In one pocket."

The room clapped. Not everyone.

Enough.

Serena sat still for three breaths. Alex heard her count them.

Then she stood up and walked out between the tables, chin up, hands flat at her sides, past every face that had just heard her called a liar.

Nobody stopped her. At the great doors her shoulders shook once. Then she was gone.

Her napkin was still folded. She had not even touched her water.

Inside the mild, empty smile, something very old woke up.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

"Hear that, dog boy?" Julian bent down beside him, smelling of whisky. "The whole coast knows now. Your wife came to my door, and she'll come again. You can't even look after her. You sat there holding coats while her own grandmother sold her off a stage."

He shook his head, almost kindly. "She was always meant to be mine. I can give her what she wants. You can give her a bowl. So here's what you do. Divorce her. Kneel down right here and thank me for taking her off your hands, and I'll ask the Baroness to let you keep the kennel."

Alex looked at him with great interest.

"People call me the unlucky idiot, you know," he said. "If you cross me, that bad luck might just rub off on you."

Julian laughed so hard his drink sloshed over his cuff.

"Oh, you're priceless. I don't believe in superstitions. Now kneel, dog boy. Everybody's watching."

"I think your phone is going to ring," Alex said.

Julian laughed louder, and looked round to make sure the next table was laughing too. It was.

Alex picked one plain grey coat up off the floor, folded it over his arm, and walked toward the podium.

The laughter stopped, one table at a time. The idiot from the garage wing was walking up the middle of the Grand's ballroom, toward the steps where only the great houses stood.

"Sit down," the Baroness hissed. "Sit down this instant."

Patricia laughed into the microphone. "Darling, the cloakroom is the other way."

The room laughed with her. It was a relief to laugh.

He climbed one step, and Patricia leaned into the microphone again. "Oh, look. I think he's going to propose."

That got the biggest laugh of the night.

"I know," Alex said mildly. "I'm bringing the lady a coat. She looks cold."

He climbed the steps. The podium smelled of lilies and hot wax. He walked past the Baroness as if she were a chair, and stopped at Natasha Vale's shoulder.

She took the coat. He bent to her ear, and the voice that came out was not the idiot's. It was flat and cold as river stone.

"Never accept this condition. Not tonight, not ever. Go to Rebecca Morgan. Tell her it is time. I want everything the Pryces own, and everything the Tiffanys own. Every loan, every deed, every brick. Take them both down to the ground."

Natasha did not blink.

"And when it's done," he said, "it all goes to you. A gift for my wife."

The smallest nod in the world.

Alex went back down the steps and out of the ballroom after Serena, and did not look back once.

The Baroness leaned toward Natasha, smiling with all her teeth.

"You must forgive him, Ms. Vale. He was dropped on his head as a child. We think more than once. So don’t you think it is time to sign the collaboration?"

Natasha laid the coat across the podium.

"I need to ask our chairman," she said into the microphone. "Please wait."

She stepped down, walked to the Morgan table, and bent to Rebecca's ear for one short sentence.

Rebecca's hand went to the man's watch on her wrist. She looked once toward the doors where the idiot had gone, a puzzled line between her eyes. Then she took out her phone and began to give orders into it, very low, without turning her head.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify