Page 174 of Gilt

“I didn’t tell you? They were together when I went to the hospital. He’s been there since she woke up.”

“I did not call that,” Josie admits, waving her hand under her mask. “Screw this.”

She pulls off her mask and smiles tightly.

“Too hot?” I ask.

“Yeah. Besides, no one here knows who I am anyway. My face is as good as a mask,” she says with a laugh.

I don’t miss the pain that lingers in her eyes. Josie has never felt like she belongs here. I can’t imagine how she feels at the moment.

“Let’s find you some water,” I suggest, but before I can abscond with her to the kitchen, a man steps into our path. “Excuse me.”

He catches me around the waist when I try to push past him. Tipping his masked face lower, he whispers, “You don’t recognize me, Duchess?”

“Of course I do.” My fingers trace the broad shoulders accentuated by the dark cashmere of his tuxedo jacket. “You’re supposed to be watching my back.”

Literally and figuratively.

“A West is always fashionably late,” he advises me, pushing his mask up. He points to the corridor that leads to the private family rooms. “Case in point.”

Monroe is the last to arrive, despite the obsessive care she took planning it. She sweeps into the room in a long black gown that dips low, exposing the valley between her breasts. Unlike the mask she chose for me, hers is a simple lace strip tied around her eyes. Monroe West is on display for all of us to see, but how many people see past the image she projects?

Josie clears her throat to remind us that she’s still here. “I’ll give you two some space.”

Before I can tear myself away from Jameson to join her, Monroe marches up to us.

“How did they get past security?” she hisses, pointing to Sabine, her former best friend, and Levi, Jameson’s former roommate. She’s not the only one late to the party.

“Were they on the list?” Jameson asks indifferently. He’s much calmer than the last time he was in the same room as Levi. He’s had time to cope with his fair-weather friend’s betrayal.

“How can you just stand there?” Monroe demands, and I can’t help but agree with her.

“That movie will never get made. Levi will continue to be a B-list star whose destiny depends on his looks. Karma has done its part as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re a bigger person than I am.” Monroe sweeps across the room after them.

I tug Jameson’s arm, forcing him to follow.

“My sister can fight her own battles,” he reassures me, but I ignore him.

“You broke it, you bought it.”

I have no idea how Sabine and Levi got up here,” he says gruffly. “Security has been notified that they can’t so much as step foot on the sidewalk.”

“And yet, they’re here.” Judging from Monroe’s reaction, they wouldn’t be for much longer. A chilling thought occurs to me as we approach them. If it was that easy for two people to crash this party after all the security upgrades that had been made since Nathaniel’s death, how many other people could get past the surveillance and guards—tonight and the night of the murder?

As we approach the threesome, we’re joined by Hugo and Leighton. My pulse speeds up, and I clutch Jameson’s hand. I’d once considered them the Belle Mere axis of evil. Circumstances had torn them apart this summer, which means there’s no way to know how ugly this argument could get.

“You weren’t invited.” Monroe delivers her dismissal in a lowered voice, but Sabine only laughs at her.

“I know every staff member of this hotel. I’m always invited.” Sabine has eschewed the traditional uniform of pink I usually see her in. Instead, she’s rocking an electric blue number and a silver Venetian carnival mask. Next to her, Levi shifts on his heels.

Jameson doesn’t bother to tell his former friend that he’s unwelcome. He handed down that edict when he first learned that Levi planned to play him in a damning biopic. The role would have made Levi’s career. Now the movie was dead in the water along with their friendship.

The tilt of Jameson’s head is hardly perceptible, but a few moments later, Maddox appears behind our small group.

“Mr. Stone, please follow me.”