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Every surface gleams.
I tap the clipboard against my thigh and watch two men argue over whether the ice sculpture should face the entrance or the auction platform.
This is what being useful to the family looks like today. Not burying bodies. Not cleaning blood from dock planks. Not standing in the dark beside my brothers while a man’s last breath disappears into cold marina air.
No.
Now I make sure centerpieces are perfectly placed, the veneer perfectly polished, so we can hide all the dark shit underneath it all.
It would be funny if it weren’t nauseating.
An old memory creeps in before I can stop it. A different night. A different kind of preparation.
The marina.
Halstead.
Samson’s face, angry, his fists clenched.
Cain, sixteen, quiet as a shadow near the edge of the dock.
Me, standing where I was told to stand, understanding too late that obedience can be its own kind of violence.
Victor Halstead had to be taken care of.
He had information. Enough to threaten the Vexley empire. Enough to expose channels and accounts and names that were never meant to be spoken outside locked rooms. He made himself dangerous, and dangerous men get handled.
But he wasn’t the right man.
Not an innocent man.
But not the man we were supposed to do away with.
What became of the right man is anyone’s guess. He vanished into the dark the way inconvenient truths often do. No journalist put together enough pieces to bring Vexley Capital, Vexley Holdings, or my father to their knees.
I glance toward the double doors where tonight’s guests will enter when my phone rings.
My father.
Fuck.
“Father,” I say into the phone.
“Nathaniel. How is the venue?”
“Prepared.”
A short pause. “Good.”
“What do you need?” I ask. Because Arthur Vexley doesn’t call for venue updates.
“Samson won’t be attending tonight.”
I still. Across the room, a florist lifts a spray of orchids into a centerpiece. One white bloom breaks off and falls to the table. She whisks it away quickly. Once beautiful. Now trash.
“Why?”
“Something came up.”
