Chapter 1 - THE DANCE THAT STOPPED THE BALLROOM
“Dance faster!”
Victoria Sterling clapped twice as though Sarah were an animal performing for a crowd.
“Everyone wants to see how much a poor maid will do for money!”
A few guests laughed nervously.
Most did not.
Sarah Morgan stood in the center of the marble ballroom with her face burning.
She still held the polishing cloth Victoria had ordered her to carry.
Her black maid uniform suddenly felt tighter around her throat.
“Please stop this.”
“I am only here to clean the floors for my shift.”
Victoria raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“You will do whatever I tell you to do.”
Sarah glanced toward the service hallway.
Her supervisor was nowhere in sight.
Victoria had deliberately called Sarah into the ballroom after midnight cleaning had begun.
Then she had tossed three hundred-dollar bills onto the floor and ordered Sarah to dance before she could pick them up.
Sarah had refused.
That was when Victoria began humiliating her in front of nearly two hundred guests.
“Come on.”
Victoria smiled.
“Your type always has a price.”
Sarah’s hands curled at her sides.
Then a small voice tore through the ballroom.
“Mommy!”
Sarah froze.
Every drop of blood seemed to leave her face.
“Mommy, please come home with me right now!”
A little boy pushed through the crowd.
He could not have looked more out of place.
Leo was only four years old, yet he was wearing a perfectly fitted black tuxedo, a tiny white shirt, and polished shoes.
His dark hair had been combed neatly to one side.
Sarah stared at him.
“Leo?”
She rushed forward.
“Oh my goodness, what are you doing here in that tuxedo?”
Leo threw his arms around her legs.
“I was looking for you.”
Sarah crouched and hugged him.
Victoria’s smile vanished.
“Shut that noisy boy up right now before I slap both of you!”
The entire ballroom went silent.
Sarah immediately stood between Victoria and Leo.
“He is just a frightened child, Mrs. Sterling.”
“Please let me take him outside.”
Victoria stepped forward.
“You have ruined my whole evening.”
“I am going to teach you a lesson.”
Her hand lifted.
Sarah instinctively covered Leo.
Then a man’s voice exploded from behind them.
“Stop right there!”
Victoria’s arm froze in midair.
Julian Vance walked through the crowd.
He was the owner of the estate.
The chairman of Vance International.
And the man Victoria Sterling was supposed to marry in six weeks.
“Do not lay a finger on her.”
Victoria’s face changed instantly.
“Mr. Vance.”
“She is just a servant who disrespected my party.”
Julian’s gaze dropped toward Leo.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Leo was clutching something around his neck.
A tiny silver train.
Julian’s face lost its color.
He knew that necklace.
He had purchased it in Chicago five years earlier.
He had given it to only one woman.
Sarah.
Victoria grabbed Julian’s arm.
“Julian, what is going on?”
He pulled away from her.
“Stop.”
He looked directly at Victoria.
“She is his real mother.”
Victoria stared at him.
“What?”
“That is impossible.”
“She is nobody.”
Julian’s expression became terrifyingly calm.
“Touch her again and you will lose everything you own by tomorrow morning.”
Victoria swallowed.
But Julian was no longer looking at her.
He was staring at Leo.
Specifically at Leo’s eyes.
The same unusual gray-blue eyes Julian saw every morning in his own mirror.
Then Leo looked up at him.
“Mr. Vance?”
Julian crouched slowly.
“Yes?”
Leo pointed toward the silver train around his neck.
“My mommy says my daddy gave her this before I was born.”
Sarah stopped breathing.
Julian looked at her.
Victoria stumbled backward.
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And suddenly, the humiliation in the ballroom was no longer the biggest scandal of the night.
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