Chapter 7 EGGS BENEDICT AND POISON.

The black coffee slid down my throat burning like battery acid, but it was the only thing keeping me anchored to reality. Muscles I didn't even know existed ached. Sleeping on a Vanderbilt mattress was a fleeting miracle; waking up with the panic of going to prison left my blood freezing and my neck stiff.

Sitting at the massive mahogany table in the main dining room, I fiddled with a solid silver fork while trying to memorize the faces of the dozen stiff relatives surrounding us. Liam, to my right, sliced his egg-white omelet with a surgical precision that got on my nerves. He hadn't spoken a word to me since he stumbled out of the marble bathroom at dawn complaining.

I was about to deliver a preemptive stomp under the table to stop him from looking like a robot on the verge of breaking down, when the double dining room doors swung wide open.

I took a massive gulp from my cup.

Eleanor Vanderbilt-Hayes floated in wearing a raw linen dress, flanked by Winston the butler. But it wasn't the matriarch that paralyzed my lungs. It was what Winston pushed beside her: a polished silver serving cart. And on that cart, resting on a crimson velvet cushion, was the damn funerary pug vase with the ruby eyes.

The boiling liquid went down the wrong pipe. I coughed violently, spitting a cloud of coffee directly onto the fine china plate in front of me.

The clinking of silverware against porcelain stopped dead. The entire table turned to look at me with expressions of pure aristocratic disgust.

Liam reacted before my brain could process the humiliation. He delivered two sharp, brutal slaps to my back that nearly dislocated a vertebra, grabbed a linen napkin, and wiped the corner of my mouth hard.

"Easy, my love," Liam said, using that insufferable, fake British tone. "I told you the dark roast in the morning irritates your delicate throat."

"Yes... the roast," I gasped, eyes watering, forcing a pathetic smile at Eleanor, who had just taken her seat at the head of the table. Winston parked the cart with the vase right next to her, like it was just another guest.

Controlling my facial expression required all my experience playing poker in dive bars. The loot I nearly broke my neck for last night was fifteen feet away, gleaming under the sunlight pouring through the windows. My fingers itched to grab it and sprint, but survival instinct forced me to dig my nails into my own thighs under the table.

"I trust the breakfast is to your liking, Miss Beaumont," Eleanor murmured, slicing a piece of melon with sheer apathy.

"Exquisite," I lied, tasting the dried blood on my split lip from last night's clash of teeth.

A platinum blonde girl sitting right across from us leaned over her plate of eggs Benedict. She wore a pearl headband and stared at me with the exact intensity of an entomologist examining a rare bug. It was Penelope, the favorite niece.

"Aunt Eleanor told us about your... eventful encounter at the museum last night," Penelope started, drawing out her vowels. "A shame about the porcelain shepherdess. But something else intrigues me. You mentioned you flew in from Europe. Monaco in the summer is so dreadfully common nowadays. Which marina did you dock your yacht in? We usually anchor the Ocean's Pride in Port Hercules."

Silence fell over the table again. This time, thick and dangerous.

I drew a blank. My knowledge of Monaco was strictly limited to nineties heist movies. If I named the wrong spot, they'd make us. My hands started sweating cold. I shot Liam a sidelong glance, praying the idiot had a contingency plan in his office-worker brain.

Liam set his silverware on his plate. He cleared his throat, straightening his posture until he looked more aristocratic than Eleanor herself.

"We didn't anchor in Port Hercules, Penelope," he replied, his voice taking on a velvety, condescending edge that gave me chills. "In fact, we didn't anchor anywhere. We sank."

My eyes bulged. We sank?

"You sank?" repeated an old uncle from the other end of the table, adjusting an imaginary monocle.

"An absolute disaster," Liam continued, reaching across the table to take my left hand, interlacing his freezing fingers with mine. The sudden contact sent an electric shock up my arm, but I forced myself not to pull back. "The starboard engine of our private yacht suffered a critical failure off the coast of Corsica. The captain was negligent. The flames reached the main deck in a matter of minutes."

Penelope opened her mouth, equally fascinated and horrified. My improviser brain caught the thread of the lie mid-air. Liam built the stage; I had to supply the drama.

"It was a nightmare," I jumped in, squeezing Liam's hand with dramatic force, resting my head on his shoulder. "The smell of smoke woke me. I had to abandon my entire Louis Vuitton trunk. All my seasonal jewelry... resting at the bottom of the Mediterranean. But Arthur..." I swallowed bile using his fake name. "...my brave Arthur kicked the cabin door down, wrapped me in a blanket, and hauled me into the emergency lifeboat while the stern disappeared underwater."

A murmur of awe rippled across the table. Even Graves, standing near the door with his arms crossed, frowned slightly, weighing the story.

"We lost all our luggage and our primary documents," Liam finished, tracing slow circles with his thumb over the back of my hand. "That is why our attire last night at the museum was not the most... appropriate. The trauma left us disoriented. We were merely seeking some art to calm our nerves after weeks of post-traumatic stress."

Penelope stared at us with wide eyes, her hostility disarmed by the fictional tragedy.

"What a dreadful ordeal. You are so terribly brave."

I kept my head resting on Liam's shoulder, feeling the rigid tension of his muscles beneath his shirt. We pulled it off. We spun a bulletproof alibi out of thin air, saving our asses in the most absurd way possible.