Chapter 5 - The Midnight TransformationSaturday evening arrived with a biting chill that cleared the autumn smog from the Chicago skyline. The streets around the historic Drake Hotel were choked with idling luxury vehicles. Valets in crisp black wool coats moved briskly between imported sedans and sleek European sports cars, their breath pluming in the crisp air beneath the grand entrance canopy.
Inside the staff locker rooms in the basement of the hotel, the atmosphere was chaotic. Caterers rushed back and forth, organizing trays of hors d'oeuvres, checking wine temperatures, and pinning name tags to their collars.
I stood in front of a full-length mirror in a private holding room down the hall—a room secured by my lawyers three days prior under a special corporate hospitality lease agreement.
I wasn't wearing a polyester server uniform.
Reflected in the mirror was a woman entirely unrecognizable to the desperate girl who had stood in the rain a month ago. I wore a backless, midnight-blue silk gown that clung to my silhouette like cool water, catching the ambient light with a subtle, liquid shimmer. The fabric was a bespoke creation from a Parisian atelier, delivered via courier twenty-four hours earlier.
Around my neck rested the centerpiece of the evening: the Silas Diamond.
Uncle Silas had kept the legendary yellow-tinted, pear-cut diamond locked inside his private vault for over forty years, a museum-grade heirloom rumored to be worth upwards of twelve million dollars. When Abernathy handed over the estate contents, the diamond had been resting in a velvet-lined mahogany box with a handwritten note from Silas attached: “Give this to the only person in the family with enough spine to wear it proudly, Evelyn. Let it blind the bastards.”
That necklace alone was worth more than my father’s entire primary residential mortgage, plus his luxury sedan, combined.
I slipped my feet into custom Jimmy Choo heels, swept my dark hair up into an intricate, elegant chignon that left my shoulders bare, and applied a slick of deep crimson lipstick.
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At exactly seven o'clock—the peak arrival time for the VIP guests—I didn't head down to the basement service corridors.
Instead, I walked up the grand marble staircase that led directly from the main hotel lobby to the double oak doors of the Windsor Ballroom.
