Falling into the Horror Boss's Lap novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Box Four
Billie overhears the Latrobes plan her death, falls through the curtain into the Horror's lap, drops her ring in the villain's glass, and a guard is found Sitting in the aisle.
The first thing I heard was Alden Latrobe laughing, soft and fond.
I was standing behind a velvet curtain at the Meridian Theatre, holding my skirt out of the dust, hunting for a quiet place to breathe.
My engagement party was going on below me, three hundred people in horror masks drinking to my future.
I wore a green velvet gown and a mask shaped like a cat's face.
My fiance had chosen the theme.
"The Ferrand girl will say her vows on the pier," Alden said, on the other side of the curtain.
"Right at the water, like her father wanted."
"Dad, she hates that old pier," Dalton said.
"She doesn't have to like it for long."
I stopped breathing.
"After the vows, you take her down the stairs to the dock for photographs," Alden said.
"Those stairs are slick in November."
"Her father's heart gave out in July, and nobody questioned that either."
Dalton said nothing for a moment.
Then he said, "And the pier goes to me as her husband."
"The pier goes to the Latrobes," Alden said gently, "and you get a very sad few months."
Dalton laughed.
I had kissed that laugh goodnight for eight months.
My father had died in his own bed with a hospice nurse in the next room, and I had stood at his bedside holding his hand while the monitor went flat.
I had cried on Dalton's shoulder for a week.
I let go of the curtain.
I did not scream, because screaming gets you caught.
I picked up my skirt and ran.
I took the nearest stairs up, away from the music, away from Dalton's father and his white carnation.
The stairs ended at a ring of private boxes, all of them dark except one.
Box 4 had its curtain drawn and a single lamp burning behind it.
I heard footsteps below me, fast and expensive, and Dalton's voice calling my name.
"Billie? Babe?"
I did the only thing left.
I shoved through the curtain of Box 4 and pitched forward, tripped on my own hem, and landed in somebody's lap.
It was a man's lap, and the man did not move.
He was big, and warm, and dressed in black, and he smelled like cedar and cold air.
His hand had caught my waist before I fell, and it stayed there.
I looked up.
He was the only face in the whole theatre without a mask.
He had black hair, a long still face, dark gray-green eyes, and a scar that split his left eyebrow.
Every person on the floor below had gone quiet, because the box overlooked the whole hall.
Three hundred masks had turned to look up at me sitting on the Horror's knees.
Everyone in Baltimore knew that face.
It belonged to Donovan Stroud, the man the whole city called the Horror.
They said the man who owned the harbor had never been touched by anyone he hadn't ordered to.
They said men who crossed him were found at dawn sitting in their own best chairs, facing their front doors, hands folded, lights on, never speaking of it again.
"Miss," he said, in a voice like gravel in a velvet bag.
"You have the wrong box."
"No," I said.
I did not get up.
"I have exactly the right one."
His hand did not leave my waist.
Dalton burst through the curtain behind me with his skull half-mask pushed up on his forehead.
"There you are," he said, with his best boyfriend smile.
"Billie, come on. You're embarrassing yourself."
His eyes went to the man's face and the smile slid.
Alden came in behind him, calm, a white carnation in his lapel.
"Mr. Stroud," he said warmly. "My apologies. Billie's had a little too much champagne."
I had not touched the champagne.
I took off my cat mask and set it on the man's knee.
"My name is Billie Ferrand," I said, loud enough for the hall to hear, because the box rail carried every word.
The man's hand tightened on my waist.
It was the smallest movement, and I felt it everywhere.
"I heard what you said about the pier stairs," I told Alden.
"I heard what you said about my father."
Alden's smile did not move at all.
That was how I knew it was true.
I pulled off the pear-cut diamond Dalton's mother had given me.
I leaned over the box rail, found the glass of champagne in Alden's hand, and dropped the ring into it.
It sank with a small bright plop.
"I'm not marrying your son," I said.
Dalton lunged and grabbed my arm.
The man in black said, "No."
He did not shout.
He did not even look at Dalton.
The lights went out.
A woman's voice somewhere in the dark said, very dry, "Right on time."
When the lights came back, Alden's bodyguard was sitting in the aisle chair at the bottom of the box stairs, facing the exit with his hands folded in his lap.
His eyes were open, and he was breathing, and he did not look hurt at all.
The man in black lifted me off his knee and stood me on my feet.
Then he turned to three hundred silent masks and said, "Miss Ferrand is my guest."
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