AUTHOR’S POV
"Is that... a precinct?"
The whisper cut through the suffocating silence of the Grand Ballroom like a serrated blade. On the massive projector screen, the graininess of a security feed flickered, illuminating the faces of the city’s elite in a cold, ghostly blue.
The girl on the screen was unrecognizable from the woman in midnight-blue silk sitting at the head table. That Ava Hart was hollowed out, her hair matted by rain, her coat tattered and stained with the grime of the streets. She was being led through a sterile, fluorescent-lit hallway by two uniformed officers, her wrists thin and trembling.
The date at the bottom of the feed was a ghost from the past: the night Daniel Hart’s empire had breathed its last.
Margaret didn't turn the video off. She let it linger on a
