When I knocked on the door of Isabella’s family apartment above Elena’s Corner Diner at five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, I was back in my titanium wheelchair, wearing a bespoke midnight-blue Tom Ford tuxedo and carrying a long, ivory garment bag bearing the gold crest of Bergdorf Goodman.
Isabella opened the door in jeans and a faded sweatshirt, her eyes widening in shock when she saw me sitting on the landing. "Ethan! What are you doing here? Wait—how did you even get up the stairs?"
"My driver Frank helped me up," I said smoothly, gesturing toward the garment bag in my arms. "Tonight at eight o'clock, Chad and Brooke are hosting the hundred-million-dollar syndication gala at the Pierre Hotel Ballroom—with the exact same VIP crowd from last Saturday night, plus half the financial press in New York. I’m going back into that room tonight to finish what they started. And I want the only person in Manhattan who treated me like a human being when I had nothing to sit right beside me at Table 1."
Isabella hesitated, biting her lip. "Ethan, those people are vicious. After what happened at the diner on Tuesday, what if Chad has security throw you out into the street again?"
"I promise you, Isabella, tonight nobody is throwing us anywhere," I said softly, holding her gaze. "Open the box."
When she unzipped the Bergdorf Goodman bag and saw the custom floor-length crimson silk-satin gown inside, along with a pair of silver Jimmy Choo heels and a velvet box holding my late mother’s genuine sapphire-and-diamond drop earrings—the real set my father had kept in the Greenwich boathouse safe while Brooke wore the insured retail jewelry—Isabella covered her mouth with both hands.
At exactly eight-thirty that evening, the crystal chandeliers of the Grand Ballroom at The Pierre blazed over three hundred guests dining on lobster thermidor beneath a thirty-foot LED projection wall reading: STERLING-VANCE COMMERCIAL HOLDINGS: THE NEW ERA.
Up on the raised mahogany stage stood Chad Sterling—still wearing my father’s Patek Philippe watch—with his arm wrapped tightly around Brooke, who was glittering in a white sequenced bridal-style gown. Sitting front and center at Table 1 was Brooke’s mother, Evelyn, smugly stroking the collar of my mother’s stolen Russian sable fur coat right inside the air-conditioned ballroom so everyone could admire it.
"Before we sign the final syndication closing documents with our partners from Goldman and JPMorgan on stage tonight," Chad’s voice boomed through the ballroom speakers, dripping with crocodile tears as he looked out over the crowd, "Brooke and I want to ask for a moment of prayer for our former partner, Ethan Vance. As many of you heard after last weekend’s unfortunate outburst, Ethan’s physical and mental health has deteriorated rapidly. Yesterday, his physicians informed us that Ethan has retreated into strict, isolated hospice care in Queens, and he has formally signed over his remaining life-estate rights so Brooke and I can carry his father’s legacy forward."
Brooke dabbed a completely dry eye with a silk handkerchief, leaning into the microphone. "Ethan made terrible financial mistakes with the IRS before his tragic accident, and it broke my heart to watch the man I once loved lose his mind to pain medication. Honestly, if his heart gives out this weekend, as Dr. Voss fears it might, at least we know he’s finally out of his misery."
Polite, sympathetic murmurs rippled across the thirty banquet tables. Behind Brooke’s back, Chad flashed a secret, wicked grin toward Evelyn at Table 1—three predators savoring the thought of my dead body lying in a locked bedroom across the East River while they prepared to pocket fifty million dollars on Monday morning.
Then, at the very back of the ballroom, the twelve-foot gilded double doors slammed open with a deafening bang that echoed across the marble walls.
Every single head in the room whipped around. The string quartet screeched to a halt.
Sitting squarely in the center of the doorway under the spotlight was me in my titanium wheelchair—and walking right beside me, looking like absolute royalty in flowing crimson silk with her chin held high, was Isabella Rodriguez.
On stage, the champagne flute slipped straight out of Chad Sterling’s fingers and shattered into a thousand pieces across the mahogany podium. Brooke let out a choked, strangled gasp right into the live microphone, stumbling backward so hard she nearly ripped the hem of her white gown, her eyes bulging in sheer, unadulterated terror as if a rotting corpse had just crawled out of a grave in Queens and rolled into the Pierre Hotel.
"Hello, Chad," I called out, my calm voice carrying clearly across the dead-silent ballroom as I rolled slowly down the center carpet toward the stage—right before I reached down with both hands, clicked the silver wheel brakes into lock, planted my black leather dress shoes flat on the red carpet, and stood straight up to my full six-foot-two height in front of three hundred gasping witnesses.
