When he found her tangled in the net, barely conscious, he didn’t hesitate for a single second.
“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice breaking.
“I’ve got you, Maria.
Stay with me.”
Above them on the balcony, Victoria stood frozen, staring down at the scene unfolding below, the fiance she loved, cradling the maid she had just tried to kill. While 200 guests slowly began to realize something had gone terribly wrong at the party of the year, Victoria thought the worst was over.
She had no idea it had only just begun. The ambulance lights painted the front of the tower in flashing red
and white.
And for the first time in his adult life, Daniel Whitfield stood in front of 200 of Chicago’s wealthiest people looking completely utterly broken.
He rode with Maria to the hospital.
He didn’t care what anyone thought about that.
He held her uninjured hand the entire way, whispering things like, “You’re going to be okay.”
And, “I’m so sorry.
I should have seen this coming.”
Even though there was no way he could have known, or so he believed in that moment, because the truth was more complicated than a single act of jealousy on a balcony. At the hospital, while Maria was being treated, Daniel sat in the waiting room with his head in his hands.
And that’s when his assistant, a nervous young man named Charlie, approached him carefully.
Sir, there’s something you should probably know.
Before all of this happened tonight, Daniel looked up, his
eyes read. What is it?
Charlie hesitated.
Miss Sinclair asked me last month to look into Maria’s background.
Full background check.
I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Some fiances do that kind of thing. But I found something odd while I was pulling the file.
Maria Santos isn’t just your housekeeper, sir.
What are you talking about? Charlie swallowed hard. Her father was Manuel Santos.
He worked construction for your father’s company almost 20 years ago.
He was the foreman on the site where your dad had that fall, the one that almost killed him back before the company went public.
