After all, basic manners still mattered to me. I got to my feet, clutching the small gift box in both hands—the antique porcelain figurine I had spent six months hunting down—and started toward the head table.
It felt like crossing a battlefield. Every step carried me through rows of cold, judging faces.
Jason noticed me only when I was a few feet away. His expression twisted as if I had done something obscene. He sprang up so fast his chair toppled backward, then planted himself directly in front of me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he hissed, keeping his voice low enough for only the nearest guests to hear.
“I want to congratulate your mother,” I said. My voice shook despite every effort to steady it.
“Go sit down.” His fingers clamped around my elbow hard enough to hurt. “Don’t embarrass me.”
“How am I embarrassing you? By being your wife?”
“By looking like some broke nobody,” he spat in a sharp whisper. “Look at yourself. You don’t belong here. You’re nothing. Mom doesn’t need to listen to your pretentious nonsense about art. Leave.”
“Jason, you’re hurting me.” I tried to pull free.
“You’ll know what hurting is when I shut off your cards,” he said, shoving me back. “Get back to your corner. And don’t you dare open your mouth.”
At that exact second, the music cut out. The DJ was switching tracks, and Jason’s last words burst into the sudden silence, carrying across the entire room.
“…LEARN YOUR PLACE, YOU LEECH! YOU’RE ONLY HERE BECAUSE WE PITY YOU!”
Hundreds of faces turned toward us. Linda froze with a piece of sturgeon balanced on her fork. Katie lifted a hand to her mouth, but not quickly enough to hide the smile curling at her lips.
I stood in the center of that glittering hall feeling as though someone had peeled the skin from my body. Heat flooded my face. I wanted the ridiculous gold parquet floor to split open and swallow me whole.
“What did you just say?” I asked barely above a whisper.
In that silence, it sounded almost like a scream.
Jason realized he had gone too far, but backing down in front of his friends was not something he could allow himself to do. So he chose to finish the blow.
“I said stop forcing yourself on decent people with your cheap little present,” he snapped. “Get out of sight. You’re ruining the party. Waiter! Take the lady away. She isn’t feeling well.”
A security guard started toward us. He was enormous, built like a refrigerator in a dark suit.
“Come with me, ma’am,” he rumbled, reaching for my arm.
I squeezed the gift box so tightly the cardboard buckled under my fingers. The tears I had been holding back all evening finally spilled over. This was the end. Not merely of the dinner. Of my entire life as I had known it.
I turned, intending to run, but my legs refused to obey. One heel caught between the seams of the parquet. I stumbled.
“Take your hands off her.”
The voice was not loud, yet it carried such authority that the guard jerked his hand away as if he had touched a flame.
From a nearby table half-hidden in the shadow of a column, a man rose. I had noticed him only in passing before. He had been sitting alone, drinking water, speaking to no one.
He was tall, with completely silver hair and a profile as sharp as a blade. His jacket was plain gray, but it fit him with the kind of effortless precision the expensive suits on the local rich men failed to achieve.
Slowly, he came toward us. The strike of his cane against the floor was crisp, deliberate, and impossible to ignore.