His Dancer, His Chains novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Paid in Full

The Belcher Family Cardiac Charity Fund held its gala in a hotel ballroom with four chandeliers and three hundred guests.

We came in through the main doors on Saturday night, and the room went quiet.

I wore the green dress.

Pippa wore blue and carried a clutch she kept opening and closing.

Behind us, in a rented tuxedo that did not fit, walked the manager of the Gilded Room.

He had a canvas bank bag under his arm and a face the color of putty.

He had come to Rafferty's lawyer on Friday night, shaking, with a ledger.

Nicolette had stopped paying him the day the story ran, and he had worked out whose neck was next.

"Tell me again where the money was," I whispered to him at the door.

"The safe in the office behind the stage. Two Fridays of cash. She told me to leave it there until someone from the Foundation came on the first."

"And you opened it this afternoon, with Rafferty's lawyer watching."

"I did," he said miserably. "I'm giving you everything. Please tell them I helped."

"I'll tell them what you did," I said.

Thaddeus Belcher sat at a front table with nobody beside him.

His watch was back on his wrist, and he was looking at his hands.

Nicolette stood at the podium in gold silk.

She had put her hair up, and she smiled when she saw us.

"Friends," she said into the microphone. "Thank you, all of you, for being here tonight in what has been a difficult week for the Belcher family."

"We are here for children and adults whose hearts needed someone to say yes."

"We have one of our patients with us. Pippa Pownall, would you stand?"

Pippa stood up, because three hundred people were looking at her.

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