Chapter 5 - The Price of the Silk
The room went instantly quiet.
Chloe was sitting on the edge of the velvet sofa, her mascara smudged, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of my silk robe. Marcus stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, his tie completely gone, his shirt soaked in sweat. He looked like a man who had spent the last two hours staring into an abyss and realized the abyss was staring back with a Sterling crest.
"Victoria," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a desperate, placating tone that made my skin crawl. "Look, let’s be reasonable. We had a fight. Things got out of hand. Gregory misunderstood my orders—"
"Don't lie to me anymore, Marcus. It's insulting to both of us," I said, staying near the door while Elena stood behind me like an obsidian statue. "Gregory didn't misunderstand anything. You wanted a public spectacle. You wanted the hospitality world to see that you were the dominant force in this marriage before you filed your fraudulent divorce papers next week."
Marcus checked his pockets, realizing again that he had no phone, no keys, no digital access to anything outside these four walls. "What do you want, Victoria? You’ve frozen my money. You’ve humiliated me in front of the entire city. Are you happy now?"
"I’ll be happy when my mother’s property is returned to my hand," I said, looking directly at Chloe. "Take off the brooch, Chloe. Carefully."
Chloe’s hand flew to her lapel, her fingers clutching the sapphires. "Marcus bought this for me! It was in the corporate gift vault!"
"The corporate gift vault contains luxury watches and travel vouchers, Chloe, not family heirlooms that have been registered with the international jewelers' guild since 1922," I said, stepping forward. "My mother left that brooch to me in her specific will. It was stored in the master suite's private wall safe—a safe Marcus cracked using the administrative code he stole from my desk last month."
I held out my hand. "Take it off, or the marshals downstairs will add grand larceny to the corporate fraud charges currently being compiled against your consulting firm."
Chloe looked at Marcus, her eyes begging him to defend her, to use that roaring baritone voice that had captivated her in the VIP lounges. But Marcus didn't look at her. He was staring at the floor, his posture completely broken. He knew that every word I said was backed by a legal team that could bury him under a mountain of paper before sunrise.
With trembling fingers, Chloe unpinned the brooch and set it on the marble coffee table between us. The deep blue stones caught the light from the chandelier, flashing with a brilliant, untamed fire.
"Now, the robe," I said calmly.
Chloe blinked, her face flushing crimson. "What? I don't have anything else to wear! My clothes are in the guest room—"
"The guest room is locked, and your garments have already been packed into cardboard boxes and sent to the service entrance," I said. "That robe was custom-made for me by a master weaver in Kyoto. Your skin shouldn't even be touching it. Take it off, or leave this hotel in a bedsheet. I truly don't care which you choose."
"Marcus!" Chloe wept, standing up. "Do something!"
"Sign the waiver, Chloe," Marcus muttered, his voice dead. "Just... just give her the robe."
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Five minutes later, Chloe Vance left the Presidential Suite wearing a standard white cotton hotel bathrobe—the cheap kind we provided for standard double rooms on the lower floors—and carrying her designer high heels in her hand. She didn't look like a brand consultant anymore; she looked like a transient who had wandered into the wrong building.
Only Marcus remained, standing by the window as the first light of dawn began to gray the Chicago skyline.
