The Butler (The Butler #1)

Prologue

In the hills above Cannes, in the heart of the French Riviera, the sun readies itself to rise.

Ahead of its arrival, an orange glow rolls across the Provencal tiles like a red carpet preparing for the main event.

Each house is a kilometer or more from its neighbor, and each has been built to the precise specifications of its exacting owner.

Here, a stark white box; there, a honey-stone villa.

An L-shape next to a U-shape next to a quartet of cottages linked by glass passages.

The residences here have only two things in common: They all overlook Cannes’s glittering bay, and they all are worth tens of millions of euros.

Save for their up lit entranceways and the blinking lights of state-of-the-art intruder alarms, the villas sit in darkness.

A few hours ago, the film festival after-parties were in full swing; women in teetering heels and scraps of satin, men with dickey bows loose around their necks.

The congratulatory bonhomie of earlier in the night giving way to snide gossip and bad decisions fueled by envy and illicit substances.

But now even that has come to an end. The last of the parties has finally finished, and it is not yet time for the domestic staff to emerge, plastering smiles on their faces as they mix breakfast Bloody Marys for hungover guests.

In a few hours, the hillside will throb with music once more, the strains of laughter drifting from villa to villa, but for now, all is quiet.

It is into this limbo that the sun is now emerging, bringing with it a heat that will by lunchtime send the villas’ inhabitants in search of shade and cool, marbled floors. As it rises, the orange glow becomes more vivid until the roofs are aflame, the sky a blaze of color.

At Villa Sérénité, the morning light hits the pool—an azure oval lined with yellow-striped steamer chairs—and the water sparkles with silver. But right in the center, little more than a dark shadow against the sharp white tiles, lies a body, waiting for the dawn.

Waiting to be discovered.