Chapter 1 - Nobody Leaves This Room
Amara slapped Jade Briggs’s girlfriend so hard the room forgot how rich Jade was.
One second earlier, Jade had been standing over Dr. Odette Briggs’s wheelchair in the penthouse library, gripping the elderly woman’s chin between manicured fingers.
Then her open hand cracked across Dr. Briggs’s cheek.
The old woman’s glasses fell from her face and hit the marble floor.
The left lens cracked.
“Please,” Dr. Briggs whispered. “Stop.”
That was all Amara needed.
She dropped the folded towel in her hands and crossed the library like a storm.
She was twenty-six, Ghanaian-American, her braided bun tight at the back of her head, gray housekeeping uniform pressed clean, white sneakers squeaking against the polished floor. She did not pause to calculate rank, money, contracts, or consequences.
She only saw a seventy-four-year-old woman in a wheelchair being struck in her own son’s home.
Amara stepped between them.
Jade turned with a sharp laugh.
“Move, maid.”
Amara’s hand rose.
One slap.
Clean.
Hard.
Controlled.
Jade spun half a step and dropped onto one knee, stunned, one hand flying to her reddening cheek.
Amara planted herself in front of Dr. Briggs’s wheelchair, shoulders wide, breathing hard.
“Don’t you dare touch her again.”
The Houston skyline glittered through the library windows behind them.
A reading lamp glowed beside a leather armchair.
Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
Staff members froze in the hallway, too shocked to move.
Above the doorway, the security camera blinked quietly.
Jade looked up from the marble floor, hair falling across her face, fury already replacing surprise.
“Dex!” she screamed. “She attacked me!”
The camera of the room seemed to turn toward the doorway before Dex Briggs entered.
He came fast, phone in one hand, navy suit jacket open, face controlled in the way powerful men look when emotion is being held behind locked doors.
He saw Jade on the floor.
Amara standing over her.
His mother in the wheelchair.
The cracked glasses near the wheel.
The fresh red handprint on Dr. Briggs’s cheek.
Then Dex looked up.
At the security camera.
His phone vibrated.
One notification.
Penthouse Library Motion Event Uploaded.
Dex looked down at the screen.
Nobody else could see what he saw.
But everyone saw his face change.
Not loud.
Not explosive.
May you like
Cold.
“Nobody leaves this room,” he said.
