The Slum Heiress Bringing Down the Elite Clan novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ring on the Table
At the Saltonstall gala Maeve kills a live scandal in one speech, then sets her dead mother's ring in front of Eugene, who orders her thrown into the harbor.
The Saltonstall harbor gala had four hundred guests, a string quartet, and one widow with a cardboard sign.
I was standing by the ice sculpture when the widow walked through the front doors.
Her sign said, "My husband died on your crane. Where is my check?"
She had a toddler on her hip and a phone held up, already live.
Nobody on the Saltonstall staff moved.
I had been the family's crisis consultant for six days.
I had never been in this room before, and I had wanted to be in it since I was four years old.
Eugene Saltonstall was on the stage with a champagne glass, halfway through a toast to the company's one hundred and fifty years.
His daughter Brielle stared at the widow with her mouth open.
The communications director whispered, "Call security, call security."
That would have put a crying woman on every news feed in the state by midnight.
My father, Dermot Keane, taught me that a room belongs to whoever speaks first.
I put my glass down and walked to the widow before the guards did.
"What did they tell you?" I asked her.
"That the file was closed," she said.
"Then let's open it where everyone can hear."
I took her elbow and walked her up the steps to the stage.
Eugene's smile went stiff, but four hundred people were watching, so he stepped aside.
I took the microphone from the stand.
"Good evening. I'm Maeve Keane, and I advise the Saltonstall family."
"This woman's husband died on a Saltonstall crane in March."
The room went very quiet.
"Mr. Saltonstall has asked me to tell you the company will pay her family two million dollars tonight."
"It will also open its safety records to an outside inspector this week."
I turned and held out the microphone.
Every phone in the room was pointed at Eugene.
He could say no and be the man who refused a widow in a tuxedo.
Or he could say yes.
"Of course," Eugene said, in a voice like a closing door. "Of course we will."
The widow burst into tears, and the room applauded.
I had saved his company in a matter of moments.
I also had his promise, on video, in front of four hundred witnesses.
He grabbed my arm as the applause died down and hissed, "Who sent you?"
"Your own staff did, Mr. Saltonstall," I said. "I'm very good at this."
He let me go, because people were looking.
At the wall, the head of security, Rafe Hawkins, had not looked away from me once.
He walked off the stage to his table, and I followed him down the steps.
The table was long and white, with the family seated at it.
An old woman sat at the center with a silver-headed cane across her knees.
That was Winifred Saltonstall, seventy-nine years old, who owned the trust and everyone in it.
She watched me come with eyes the color of the harbor in February.
I had practiced this moment for twenty-three years.
I took a gold ring from the chain around my neck and pulled it free.
It had a small anchor cut into the face.
I set it on the white tablecloth in front of Eugene, and the metal clicked against his plate.
"Do you know whose that is?" I asked.
Brielle leaned forward and went pale.
Eugene looked at the ring for a long time.
Something crossed his face that I had been waiting my whole life to see.
It was not surprise.
It was fear.
"My mother wore it the night she died," I said. "She had it on when she went into the water under your pier."
Winifred's hand tightened on her cane.
"I'm her daughter," I said. "I'm Maeve Saltonstall, and I'm back."
Eugene stood up so hard his chair fell over.
"That's a slum con," he said, loud enough for the whole room. "My sister's brat drowned with her."
"Is that what you saw, Mr. Saltonstall?" I asked.
His jaw worked.
Then he turned to the two guards at the wall and pointed at me.
"Take this woman out of here and throw her in the harbor," he said. "That's where her mother went."
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