The heavy brass locks of the Sterling Plaza engaged with a resounding, collective clack.
Julian bolted. He spun around, desperate, looking for an exit, but there was nowhere to go. The detectives moved in immediately. Julian lunged toward me in a final, pathetic act of desperation, his carefully maintained mask entirely gone.
“You vindictive little b—!”
He never finished the word. One of the detectives caught him hard around the shoulders, twisted his arms violently behind his back, and drove him face-first into the floor. His knees hit Victoria’s pristine white aisle runner with a dull thud. The collective gasp that tore through the high-society crowd felt almost holy.
Victoria was crying now, but not delicately. Her heavy mascara ran in thick black streaks as she looked from the steel handcuffs snapping around Julian’s wrists to the banking exhibits clutched in her father’s hands.
“My God,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You were using me too.”
Julian let out a wild, ugly, breathless laugh as the detective pulled him to his knees. “Everyone uses everyone, Victoria! It’s just business!”
“Not anymore,” I said.
I walked forward, the tap of my heels silencing the whispers around us. I stopped right in front of the kneeling man who had once left my son to freeze to death. I didn’t yell. I didn’t strike him.
I simply reached down, grabbed his left wrist, and unclasped the vintage 1968 Rolex Daytona. I slid the heavy silver watch off his arm, the cool metal a stark contrast to his sweating skin.
“This belongs to my family,” I said, my voice perfectly steady.