Chapter 2 - EIGHT MISSING MINUTES
I stared at my employee number until the digits blurred.
"That's impossible."
Marcus checked the log again.
"The system says the deletion request came from your credential."
I pulled my keycard from the pocket of my apron.
"This never left me tonight."
Dominic took the card but did not touch the magnetic strip.
"Can credentials be cloned?"
Marcus nodded slowly.
"Technically, yes."
"How difficult?"
"For an ordinary customer, difficult."
He looked toward the locked office door.
"For someone with internal access, not difficult at all."
The meaning settled between us.
Someone inside Aether had not merely failed to stop what happened.
Someone had anticipated that evidence might need to disappear.
I thought of Dennis telling me to keep Preston happy.
I thought of the way Richard Hale had looked at me when he arrived.
Not shocked.
Calculating.
"Where is Dennis?"
Marcus checked another camera.
The manager's office was empty.
The staff elevator showed Dennis leaving the forty-eighth floor at 11:26.
He had left five minutes before Richard Hale walked into the lounge.
"Can you lock his account?"
"Already done."
Dominic looked at Marcus.
"Do not alter anything else."
Marcus stiffened.
"I won't."
"Make two forensic copies of the access logs."
"One for police and one for the club's counsel?"
"One for police."
Dominic paused.
"One for Elena."
I looked at him.
He met my eyes.
"Your case."
Two words.
That was all.
But after a night when six men had treated my body like property, those words mattered more than he knew.
Detective Ortiz returned to the office fifteen minutes later with a digital crimes technician.
The technician photographed the terminal before touching anything.
Marcus explained the deletion log.
Ortiz listened without interrupting.
When Marcus finished, the detective turned toward me.
"Has anyone ever used your badge?"
"No."
"Have you ever lent it to another employee?"
"Never."
"Have you ever left it in an unlocked locker?"
I hesitated.
"During shifts, it stays clipped inside my apron pocket."
"Before and after?"
"My locker."
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
"Staff lockers do not have individual locks."
I stared at him.
"What?"
"Management has master access."
Dennis again.
Ortiz wrote something down.
"Who else has master access?"
Marcus named two assistant managers and the general manager.
Then he added Dennis.
Dominic asked the question I was thinking.
"Who hired Dennis?"
Marcus frowned.
"The ownership group."
"Which ownership group?"
"Aether Hospitality Holdings."
Dominic's face changed slightly.
I knew that expression.
He recognized the name.
"What?"
He looked at me.
"Nothing yet."
"Dom."
"I know the name."
"From where?"
"A development deal three years ago."
My pulse quickened.
"With Richard Hale?"
Dominic did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
Ortiz noticed the silence.
"Mr. Vale, if you know something relevant, now would be a good time."
Dominic nodded.
"Hale Urban Development tried to buy the building that houses Aether three years ago."
"Tried?"
"My company blocked the acquisition."
I stared at him.
"You never told me that."
"Because when you took this job, the club had a different public ownership structure."
Marcus turned toward his monitor.
"Aether Hospitality Holdings acquired controlling interest fourteen months ago."
Dominic's eyes sharpened.
"Who financed it?"
Marcus shook his head.
"I don't know."
Ortiz closed his notebook.
"Then we'll find out."
At 1:07 in the morning, Dominic finally took me home.
The city looked unreal through the tinted windows of the car.
Bars were still full.
Taxis still moved through intersections.
People laughed beneath awnings while waiting for rides.
My entire life felt rearranged, and the city had not even noticed.
I kept one hand on the side of my head.
The shaved skin felt rough beneath my fingertips.
Dominic watched me from across the back seat.
"Stop looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're planning three funerals and an acquisition."
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
"Six funerals," he said.
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
It came out broken.
Then I started crying again.
Dominic moved beside me without a word.
I leaned into him until the car reached home.
At the penthouse, our housekeeper had left every light off except the small lamp beside the entryway.
I was grateful.
I did not want brightness.
I did not want mirrors.
Dominic helped me remove my coat.
When I reached for the hidden chain around my neck, my hand stopped.
The wedding ring was still there.
I had worn it under my collar every shift for eleven months.
Tonight, it felt absurdly heavy.
Dominic watched me pull it free.
"Do you regret hiding it?"
I looked at the diamond.
"No."
He waited.
"I regret that being your wife was apparently the only thing that made them afraid of what they did."
Dominic looked away.
That answer hurt him.
I knew it did.
But it was true.
If Dominic had not walked in, Preston would have gone home laughing.
Dennis would have apologized to Preston for the inconvenience.
The staff would have cleaned my hair off the floor before brunch.
By Monday, I might have been fired for upsetting an important client.
That realization was more painful than the clippers.
"I want to testify," I said.
Dominic turned back to me.
"You will."
"Publicly if I have to."
"Okay."
"And I don't want anyone from your company leaning on the police."
His eyebrows lifted.
"Elena."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
He stepped closer.
"I will not touch your case."
"What about Richard Hale?"
Dominic's eyes cooled.
"Richard is different."
"How?"
"Because he may already be touching it."
I remembered the deleted footage.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
At 2:13, I stood in our bathroom with a pair of scissors in my hand.
Half my hair still fell past my shoulders.
The other half had been shaved almost to the scalp.
Dominic stood in the doorway.
"Do you want me to call someone?"
"At two in the morning?"
"I know people."
"Of course you do."
I looked at myself in the mirror.
For the first time since the attack, I really saw it.
The uneven lines.
The raw patches.
The tiny cut above my ear.
I expected to feel ugly.
Instead, I felt angry.
"Help me finish it."
Dominic stared at the scissors.
"Are you sure?"
"I don't want Preston to decide what my head looks like."
Dominic came closer.
His hands were steady when he took the clippers our barber kept in the guest bathroom kit.
He moved slowly.
Carefully.
Every few seconds, he stopped and asked if I was okay.
I told him yes even when I wasn't.
Dark hair fell into the sink.
This time, I chose it.
That difference mattered.
When he finished, my hair was cropped close and even.
I looked unfamiliar.
Stronger somehow.
Dominic kissed the top of my head.
"Beautiful."
I rolled my eyes through fresh tears.
"You're legally required to say that."
"No."
He touched my cheek.
"I'm contractually required to tell you when you're terrifying."
I slept for ninety minutes.
Sleep did not feel like sleep.
It felt like falling through disconnected images.
A champagne glass tipping.
A green apron folded on marble.
A buzzing sound behind my ear.
Every time I reached the ribbed glass doors in the dream, they opened onto another version of Aether.
In one, nobody had faces.
In another, every guest wore Preston's smile.
In the last, Dominic stood outside pounding on glass that would not break.
I woke with my hand gripping the shaved side of my head.
Dominic was sitting on the edge of the bed.
He had not been asleep.
"How long have you been sitting there?"
"Not long."
"Liar."
He looked down.
"I keep replaying the minute before I walked in."
"You weren't there."
"Exactly."
I understood the guilt beneath the answer.
I reached for his wrist.
"Do not turn my assault into evidence that you failed to predict the future."
He looked at me.
"That sounds like something a therapist would say."
"Then pay me."
"You are already expensive."
That tiny piece of normality let us breathe again.
At 5:46 a.m., my phone began vibrating across the nightstand.
Then Dominic's started.
Then the private line in the sitting room rang.
I sat up.
Dominic was already awake.
He checked his phone.
His expression hardened.
"What?"
He handed me the screen.
A video filled it.
The caption read: BILLIONAIRE'S SECRET WIFE THREATENS BIRTHDAY GUESTS AFTER BAR DISPUTE.
My stomach dropped.
The clip began after my hair had already been shaved.
It showed me standing in front of Preston with my apron in my hands.
"My shift ends at ten," video-me said.
"After that, I'm no longer your waitress."
Then it cut to Dominic entering with four men behind him.
Then it cut again to Richard Hale arriving.
There was no footage of Preston grabbing me.
No footage of Carter's clippers touching my scalp.
No footage of me telling them to stop.
Whoever edited it had made my words sound like a threat.
The post had been online for twenty-two minutes.
It already had more than eighty thousand views.
Comments multiplied faster than I could read them.
Some called me a liar.
Some called the attack staged.
Some claimed Dominic had sent men to terrorize Preston over a harmless prank.
My hands went cold.
"Where did this come from?"
Dominic checked the account.
"Anonymous celebrity site."
"They had the video before sunrise."
"Yes."
A second message appeared on my phone.
It was from an unknown number.
I opened it.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
It showed me leaving our penthouse three mornings earlier in workout clothes, coffee in one hand and my work bag over my shoulder.
The image had been taken from across the street.
Another photo arrived.
Me entering Aether six days earlier.
Another.
Me sitting alone in a cafe during my lunch break two weeks before that.
Then a message appeared beneath the photographs.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED MRS. VALE.
Dominic took the phone from my hand.
His face became completely still again.
I knew that look now.
This was no longer about six drunk men and a pair of clippers.
Someone had been watching me before Preston's birthday.
At 6:12 a.m., Detective Ortiz called.
"Mrs. Vale, I need you not to delete any messages you receive."
"I won't."
"And I need to ask you something strange."
I looked at Dominic.
"Go ahead."
"Do you know someone named Gavin Rook?"
The name meant nothing to me.
"No."
Ortiz was silent for a moment.
"He accessed the Aether security system last night using a contractor account."
"Who is he?"
"That's what we're trying to determine."
Dominic had gone very still beside me.
I covered the phone.
"You know him."
Dominic did not answer.
I lowered my hand.
"Detective, I'll call you back."
I ended the call.
"Dom."
He looked at me with an expression I had seen only twice in our marriage.
Fear.
"Gavin Rook used to work for my family," he said.
"Doing what?"
Dominic looked toward the windows as dawn began turning the city gray.
"Making problems disappear."
My skin prickled.
"And where is he now?"
Dominic met my eyes.
"He vanished four years ago."
May you like
He glanced at the photographs on my phone.
"Apparently, he just came back."
