Chapter 3 - The edge of a whisper
Celeste pushed herself up from the wreckage. Her fair skin was flushed crimson with fury and supreme humiliation. She swiped a piece of food from her shoulder, her hands trembling with rage. She gripped the edge of a broken chair to steady herself, her eyes burning with a venomous hatred as she looked at Vincent.
She took a step forward, her heels crunching over the broken crystal. She leaned in, keeping her voice low, meant only for Vincent and Eleanor to hear.
“If you humiliate me one more time,” Celeste hissed, her voice a threatening, venomous whisper, “I’ll tell him what you did to your father.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and lethal.
Vincent slowly turned away from Celeste and looked down at Eleanor.
For the first time in his entire life, the fiercely intelligent, unflappable matriarch of the Belladonna family looked genuinely afraid. Eleanor’s rosy complexion drained entirely of color. Her small, frail hands gripped the pearl necklace at her throat.
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“Vincent…” Eleanor whispered softly, her voice shaking in a way he had never heard before. “Who told her about that?”
Vincent’s expression hardened into a mask of pure, unyielding stone. The muscles in his jaw locked. He looked back at Celeste, who was now smiling a cruel, triumphant smile through the mess of food on her face, and then back at his terrified mother. The foundation of his entire world had just cracked open.
