Chapter 18: The Heart Ball

The Heart Ball was on Saturday, in the grand ballroom of a harbor hotel, and my father had not canceled it.

The detective had the green ledger by then, and he had called my father's lawyer twice.

Nothing had happened to Desmond Kilbride.

Warrants took time, the detective said, and the district attorney wanted more than a book and a burned building.

So my father put on his black tie and went on with his evening.

Maeve had been home in Milton for four days, and I had learned it from her lawyer.

On Friday night she sent me a text.

He's making me sing for it tomorrow. He wants me to say you and Donovan pressured me. I'm so scared. Please come.

I read it under the lamp in Donovan's study with the pack humming at my shoulder.

"You can't walk in there," Donovan said.

"I'm on the guest list. I'm a Kilbride."

"You're on his list as a girl who lost her mind."

"Then he can watch me lose it in front of everyone."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

Then he went to the closet in the hall, and brought out a long dress in dark green that had been wrapped in tissue paper.

"I didn't pick it out," he said quickly. "Dermot did. He said you'd say no to me."

"Is it his taste?"

"It's tragic. He asked a saleswoman for something that didn't make you look sick."

I held it against myself in the mirror.

It was a plain column of silk with sleeves that would cover the line at my side.

"I'll take it," I said.

The doorman at the hotel knew me.

I could see him decide, in one second, not to be the man who stopped Desmond Kilbride's daughter.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Gave My Heart to My Sister and Forgot My Last Birthday from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.