Chapter 2 - The Stumble of the First Violin
The Grand Ballroom of the Alden House Hotel on Fifth Avenue was an arena of gold leaf, white damask, and generational slaughter disguised as philanthropy.
At 8:15 on Saturday evening, five hundred of the most dangerous and wealthy figures in New York stood beneath thirty-foot crystal chandeliers. Men who controlled the concrete unions of northern New Jersey clinked vintage champagne flutes with federal appellate judges; real estate moguls whose holding companies were currently under investigation by the Southern District whispered into the ears of city commissioners; and private security details in discreet black dinner jackets lined the perimeter like slate pillars.
I stood near the east terrace doors, a glass of unopened sparkling water in my left hand, wearing a bespoke midnight-blue dinner suit cut from English wool.
Beside me, Grant Mercer was already on his third dry martini, his silver cufflinks gleaming under the lights as he scanned the receiving line near the entrance.
"She isn't coming, Julian," Grant chuckled, swirling his olive with arrogant satisfaction. "The driver called thirty minutes ago. He waited outside that tenement walk-up in Queens for twenty minutes. He said the windows were completely dark. Your little mouse had a panic attack, locked her deadbolt, and is currently crying into a box of discount crackers. Pay me my ten grand."
I didn't answer. I checked the gold Patek Philippe on my wrist. 8:19 PM.
Then the brass double doors at the head of the grand marble staircase swung inward with an unnatural, absolute silence.
The four-piece string quartet on the mezzanine was halfway through the second movement of a Schubert sonata when the first violinist’s bow caught on the E-string, producing a sharp, strangled squeak that died against the vaulted ceiling.
The music didn't fade. It collapsed.
Conversations in the grand receiving foyer dried up in concentric circles, spreading across the room like an ink stain across silk.
Standing on the threshold at the top of the marble stairs was Eleanor Price.
The breath left my lungs in an instantaneous, concussive rush that felt like a blow to the solar plexus.
The gray slacks were gone. The wire-rimmed glasses were gone. The plastic hair clip was dust in the wind.
She wore a custom-milled column dress of midnight-black velvet, cut with an architectural, sovereign severity that hugged the long, muscular line of her spine and flowed down to the polished marble floor. Her dark brown hair was swept into an intricate, unyielding crown of braids secured by five antique platinum hairpins; her lips were stained the dark, velvety crimson of aged barolo; and around her pale, bare throat hung a single, staggering piece of jewelry.
It was not diamonds.
It was an antique collar of raw, unpolished black tourmaline and five-hundred-year-old Venetian gold coins, bearing the unmistakable, raised crest of the Marchetti Maritime Syndicate.
Across the room, Salvatore Lucchese—the seventy-two-year-old capo who had ruled the Brooklyn waterfront with an iron fist since my grandfather was a boy—dropped his crystal glass.
Smash.
The vintage champagne spread across the white damask of Table One, soaking into his silk program. The old man didn't look down at the stain. His sallow, liver-spotted face went the sickly, translucent gray of curdled cream, his knuckles trembling violently where they gripped his carved mahogany walking cane.
"Dio mio," Lucchese breathed, his raspy whisper cutting through the dead quiet of the room. "The Price girl."
Grant’s martini glass tilted three degrees, gin dripping onto his satin lapel. "Julian... what the hell is that? Who is she?"
I didn't answer him. I couldn't move.
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Eleanor took her first step down the marble staircase.
She did not look at the five hundred frozen guests. She did not look at the federal prosecutors or the waterfront bosses. Her dark, unblinking hazel eyes cut across forty yards of open ballroom floor, through the glittering light of the chandeliers, and locked squarely onto mine.
