Chapter 20 Saturday, 13 June 2026 #3
Bruno grinned. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I mean, you know about Madz DuPont, right?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t… what’s that?’
Bruno grinned wider. ‘Are you not on TikTok? It’s a Madison DuPont parody account, run by our boy Ethan. Like, Perez Hilton, but for Gen Z. Ethan is obsessed with hating Madison. Ob-sessed. And she pretended to be so offended, but she lapped that shit up.’
Ethan’s words from only moments ago rang in her ears. Before tonight I hadn’t given darling Madison a passing thought in years. Clearly, that had been a bald-faced lie.
‘She knew Ethan was behind the account?’
‘Obviously. It’s TikTok – his face was in all the videos. When it came to Madison, no attention was bad attention.’
She frowned. She distinctly remembered Oliver complaining about Madison’s bad attitude when it came to their overlapping followers on their respective influencer accounts. Something told her Madison had cared very much about the kind of attention she got online.
‘Right…’ she said slowly, thinking.
She flashed back to Oliver’s comment, that he’d seen Ethan rubbing elbows with Madison at Winslow’s campaign event. Had they maintained a public friendship, in spite of Madz DuPont? Or had Ethan had a more nefarious reason for attending?
‘I will have to get on TikTok. If we ever get our phones back.’
‘Look.’ Bruno dropped his voice. ‘Ethan’s Madison fixation was borderline unhealthy. But if you’re trying to ask if I think he killed her, that’s insane. No more Madison, no more parody account. He’s crushed, believe me.’
That made sense. To a degree. But stalkers killed the objects of their obsession all the time, didn’t they?
Well, maybe not all the time. She had no idea how many incidents of stalker-perpetrated murder occurred each year.
But it was definitely a thing, and while there was no evidence Ethan had been stalking Madison, he’d had the same kind of wolfish obsession that drove stalkers over the edge.
No wonder he’d blatently lied to Hannah about it.
And the fact that he’d approached Madison at Winslow’s event… something felt off about that.
She risked a glance back towards the bar. There – finally – was Bash, engaged in an animated conversation with one of the bartenders.
‘Got it. And, um, good catching up.’
‘Yeah.’ Bruno’s eyes travelled through the dining room, settling on Ethan, who was still stationed at the end of the bar. ‘And Hannah—’
‘Excuse me.’ She stood and hurried away. Probably, he’d intended to warn her off taking anything he’d said back to Ethan. But that wasn’t a promise she could make, and besides, she needed to get to Bash while he was still…
Shit. Elle was sliding in beside him then, placing her hand on his arm. She’d have zero shot at a conversation with Bash with Elle present.
‘Hannah.’ Ethan called her over from the other end of the bar. She glanced back into the dining room and found Bruno busying himself at the cheese and charcuterie spread.
‘I saw you talking to Bruno,’ Ethan said when she reached him. ‘I don’t know what he told you, but fifty bucks said he tried to make me look like a bloodthirsty lunatic.’
‘He didn’t actually—’
But Ethan was still talking. ‘You cannot believe a word out of that boy’s mouth. Did he tell you about Columbia?’
Hannah shifted in her slippers. ‘What about it?’
‘That’s where he met Will. Through Madison.
She introduced them in her senior year, they hit it off, then she cut them both out of her life.
’ He made a swift chopping motion, hand slamming into the bar.
She flinched. ‘My take: she didn’t expect it to actually work out, and when it did, she was insanely jealous. ’
‘Damn.’
‘Uh-huh. Bruno was crushed. His grades took a nosedive; he almost got kicked out of his major. It was a whole thing.’
Hannah’s thoughts whirred. Just minutes ago, Bruno had claimed that he and Madison had no contact whatsoever while they were both students at Columbia.
But according to Ethan, she’d introduced him to his husband, and clearly he’d still cared what she thought back then – so much so it had nearly jeopardised his college career.
‘Bruno’s the one with a Madison DuPont complex,’ Ethan continued. ‘She cut him out, and he’s never gotten over it.’
Unsure what to do with the he-said-he-said of it all, Hannah took two steps back from the bar.
‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled, retreating into the lounge. This was a lot to process, but one thing was clear: neither Ethan nor Bruno had recovered from Madison’s reign of terror. And either one of them could have taken out those years of pent-up anger on her tonight.
She needed some air. Not that there was anywhere to go.
Her eyes trailed to the club’s front door – still blocked by one of New York’s finest – then to the dim hallway leading to the cloakroom and staff stairwell, which by the looks of it, was where Bash and Elle were now headed.
And standing near the reception desk was Beatrice Whitmore, watching their retreating backs.