“Henry Caldwell. Deputy Mayor with Marcus’s father back in the day. They golf together at Merion.” Alaina pauses. “Henry’s on the board of three hospitals and two universities. His wife chairs the Art Museum gala.”
“So if someone needed something buried?—”
“Henry knows people who know people.” Alaina’s voice is flat. “That’s how it works. Has been since before you were born. Since before I was born. The Ashfords and the Caldwells and the families like them—they take care of each other.”
The serpent at my spine coils tighter.
It’s not just Marcus. It’s not just Dom. It’s generations of men who’ve learned that money and connections can make anything disappear.
Including women like me.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “Why me? Why now?”
Alaina looks at me then. Really looks at me. Takes in my dark hair, my light brown skin, the curves I inherited from my father’s side.
“Because you’re visible now,” she says quietly. “Two million views. If something happens to you, people will ask questions.”
If. Not when.If.
“What about the ones who weren’t visible?”
Alaina doesn’t answer. Which is an answer.
“There was a woman last year,” she says after a long moment. “Paralegal at a Center City firm. Beautiful. Ambitious. She came to one of these fundraisers on Marcus’s arm.”
Something cold moves through me.
“What happened to her?”
“She took a job in Chicago. Very sudden. Very convenient.” Alaina pauses. “Her LinkedIn still says she’s there. Her Instagram went private six months ago and hasn’t posted since.”
“Did you try to warn her?”
“We didn’t know about her until she was already gone.” Alaina’s jaw tightens. “She wasn’t connected. Wasn’t in our circles. Just a pretty girl from Kensington who thought she’d found her ticket out.”
Kensington. My mother’s neighborhood. Where she still lives. Where my grandmother still makes guilt an art form and worries about whether I’m eating enough.
That could have been me. If I hadn’t overheard Marcus in that stairwell—if I’d just thought he was charming and ambitious and interested—that could have been me.
“You said women who weren’t connected,” I say slowly. “Women you didn’t know to count. What does that mean?”
Alaina’s eyes meet mine. Something shifts in her expression. Sadness. Recognition.
“It means the whisper network has gaps,” she says. “It means we can’t save everyone. It means some women walk into these rooms without anyone to warn them because they don’t know the right people. Don’t come from the right families. Don’t have the right?—”
She stops. But I hear what she doesn’t say.
Don’t have the right skin color. The right background. The right zip code.
Women like me.
“He picks women who won’t be believed,” I say. The words come slow. Terrible. True. “Women who can be isolated. Women whose families won’t have the resources to investigate.”
Alaina nods once.
“He picked me because Dom already owned me,” I continue. “Because I’m trapped by an NDA. Because my mother was apublic school teacher and my father is—” I pause preserving the lie. “And no one in my family has ever had the kind of money or connections that make people listen.”
“Yes.”
