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The words landed worse than a slap.
Even though I had known.
Even though I had prepared.
There is still a difference between knowing the knife exists and watching the man you married wipe your blood from the handle.
“You gave her my wedding dress,” I said.
His eyes shone with panic. “I thought you’d never wear it again.”
The ballroom inhaled.
That was the beautiful thing about public humiliation. People think it is loud, messy, vulgar. But true public humiliation is often quiet. It is one sentence spoken under chandeliers while everyone realizes the speaker has just buried himself alive.
“You thought I’d never wear it again,” I repeated.
Sloane reached for his hand.
He did not take it.
Interesting.
She noticed.
More interesting.
“Grant told me you didn’t want it,” Sloane said quickly. “He said it was just sitting in storage. He said your marriage had been over for years.”
I smiled at her then, and she flinched.
“Our marriage was not over, Sloane. It was merely under poor management.”
A few people laughed before they could stop themselves.
Grant’s mother, Eleanor Mercer, stood near the front table with one hand on her diamonds and the other clenched around a champagne flute. She looked furious—not at her son, not at his mistress, but at me for allowing witnesses.
That was when I knew the night had truly begun.
Because Eleanor Mercer cared about reputation the way ancient queens cared about bloodlines.
And I had brought both to the altar.
CHAPTER 3 — A SPEECH DRESSED AS MERCY
At 8:05 p.m., the ballroom lights dimmed for dinner.
By 8:20, everyone knew the story.
By 8:35, everyone knew only the version Sloane and Grant wanted them to know.
That was how power worked in New York. A whisper entered the room wearing perfume, and by dessert, it owned a table.
Grant moved through the ballroom with Eleanor at his side, murmuring apologies to trustees and donors. Sloane sat alone at Table Twelve, still wearing my dress, pretending not to notice the women photographing her from behind their menus.