Chapter 4

Twenty minutes passed. Twenty minutes of red pulse and siren, of guests standing in frightened clumps, of Julian shifting on the floor, half-kneeling, half-collapsed, his velvet jacket wrinkled and his shirt untucked. The initial chaos had settled into a thick, ugly silence, broken only by the occasional whisper from the wealthier guests, who had begun to murmur about lawyers and embassy calls and what their wives would say.

The man with the silver mustache, Henry Whitmore, had pulled out his phone at the ten-minute mark and was now staring at it with a mixture of horror and frustration. He held it up for Marcus to see, the screen black.

"No signal," Whitmore said. "Nothing. The building's jammed."

"I know," Marcus said. He had not moved from the chair at the banquet table. "I ordered it."

"You can't — this is a civil matter —" Whitmore sputtered. "You have no right to hold us all here. We're witnesses. We're innocent!"

"Are you?" Marcus asked. He gestured at the marble floor, where a faint smear still marked the path of Elena's knees. "You stood there and watched. You did nothing. You said nothing. You didn't even offer her a hand after I lifted him off her."

Whitmore looked away. "I didn't want to get involved."