Chapter 6 - The Red Carpet
The steps of the Metropolitan Museum were ablaze with camera flashes.
New York’s elite ascended the grand limestone staircase beneath an archway of white orchids and glass lanterns. Photographers shouted names over the roar of the Fifth Avenue traffic. Men in tuxedos guided women dripping in diamonds past security checkpoints manned by armed guards wearing Vance Logistics lapel pins.
At 9:15 PM, a matte-black Maybach pulled smoothly up to the curb.
The footman opened the door, and Dante Serrano stepped out.
The press line went instantly quiet for a heartbeat before the flashbulbs exploded in a violent frenzy. Dante was a regular fixture in the financial and crime sections of the papers, but he rarely attended public charity galas. He stood on the pavement, buttoning his tuxedo jacket, ignoring the shouting reporters.
Then, he turned back to the open door and offered his hand.
A woman stepped out into the glare of the lights.
A collective murmur rippled through the photographers. The younger reporters frantically scrolled through their tablets trying to place her face. But the older journalists—the ones who had covered the city beat for more than a decade—stopped taking pictures. Their cameras lowered. Mouths dropped open in the autumn chill.
“Is that…?” a veteran reporter from the Post muttered, pushing past a velvet rope. “That’s Kenneth Vance’s girl.”
“Don’t be stupid,” another hissed. “Julianna Vance has been fish food for seven years.”
Julianna didn't glance at the cameras. She kept her chin high, her shoulders back, her eyes fixed entirely on the grand brass doors at the top of the stairs. With Dante at her side, her velvet cape billowing slightly behind her in the October breeze, she ascended the museum steps like a queen reclaiming a conquered fortress.
At the entrance, two Vance security guards stepped into their path, their hands hovering near their jackets.
“Mr. Serrano,” the lead guard said, his eyes nervously flicking toward the woman at Dante’s side. “Your name is on the list, but your guest… we need identification.”
Dante didn't stop walking. He stepped into the guard’s personal space, his shoulder catching the man’s chest and shoving him aside with the casual force of a freight train.
“If you touch her,” Dante said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy register that made grown men tremble, “I’ll throw you over the balcony into the fountain below. Move.”
The guards parted. The massive glass doors opened.
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Julianna stepped into the great marble hall of the museum, where four hundred of New York’s most powerful people were holding champagne glasses beneath the towering statues of ancient pharaohs.
And directly on the raised stage beneath the central dome stood Julian Vance, holding a microphone, preparing to raise a glass to the memory of his uncle.
