Chapter 7 - the morning after
The viral video hit the internet before the gala even officially ended. Shot from a dozen different expensive smartphones, the footage was perfectly clear. Bright cinematic colors, the emerald dress, the chair pull, the broken paddle, and the old man’s terrifyingly calm voice: "Tell me how much my name is worth here."
By 8:00 AM the next morning, the hashtag #TheCharcoalSuit was trending worldwide.
Celeste Harrington sat in the dining room of her sprawling Manhattan penthouse, the morning sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She hadn't slept. Her makeup was meticulously reapplied, her hair perfectly styled, but the skin around her eyes was tight with panic.
She slammed her phone down onto the glass table. "Cowards," she hissed.
"They aren't answering?" asked her husband, a handsome, useless man who spent more time on golf courses than in boardrooms.
"None of them," Celeste snapped, pacing the room. "The board members, the politicians, even the chief of police. Everyone I called went straight to voicemail."
She stopped pacing and looked out at the city skyline. "Who is he? Really? I spent three hours digging through the Foundation's digital archives last night. There is nothing. Just a dummy corporation in Panama that transferred ownership to Arthur's law firm thirty years ago."
Her husband shifted uncomfortably. "My father called me this morning. He said... he said you need to pack a bag. He said you don't understand the kind of water you're swimming in."
Celeste sneered. "I am a Harrington. We don't run from some mobster relic. If he thinks he can just walk into my life and steal my foundation with an old ring and a dramatic speech, he's underestimating me. I want a full audit of the charity. I want to find the dirty money. If he's a criminal, I'll expose him."
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She picked up her phone again, dialing the one person she knew would answer. Her private investigator. "Listen to me," she said into the receiver. "I need everything you have on a man named Vincent Romano. I don't care what it costs. Dig up his graves."
What Celeste didn't know was that digging up Vincent Romano’s graves wouldn't give her leverage. It would only unleash the ghosts.
