Chapter 1 - PICK ONE
The soup hit Elena before she had time to move.
Hot broth splashed across the front of her cream silk blouse and down the blanket covering her knees.
She screamed.
“AHHH!”
Pain shot across her abdomen where the surgical incision beneath her clothes still pulled when she breathed too deeply.
Around the ballroom, conversations stopped.
Crystal glasses hovered in midair.
A violinist near the far wall lowered her bow.
Elena Hale sat frozen in the wheelchair her doctor had insisted she use for another two weeks after major abdominal surgery.
Across from her, Victor Mercer smiled.
Her stepbrother.
Thirty-nine.
Dark-haired.
Expensive tuxedo.
A man who had spent most of the evening telling anyone who would listen that Elena was “fragile now.”
Victor set the empty soup bowl down.
“Oops.”
Elena stared at him.
Then Celeste laughed.
Not awkwardly.
Not nervously.
Openly.
Celeste Mercer, Elena’s stepmother, leaned toward her with diamonds at her throat and satisfaction in her eyes.
“Look at you.”
Elena’s hands began shaking.
Victor nudged the wheelchair with his shoe.
Then kicked one wheel hard enough that the chair rolled sideways into the edge of the banquet table.
Gasps moved through the room.
“Elena,” someone whispered.
But no one stepped forward.
That was the thing about wealthy rooms.
Everyone saw everything.
Very few people wanted to become involved before knowing which side still controlled the invitations.
Elena gripped the table.
Victor laughed.
“You’re broke, Elena.”
Celeste moved closer.
Her perfume reached Elena before her voice did.
“You don’t belong here anymore.”
Elena looked at her.
Six months earlier, Celeste had called her “darling.”
Three months earlier, Victor had told her not to worry about the family companies while she was hospitalized.
Two weeks earlier, she had learned her office key no longer worked.
Yesterday, she discovered her name had been removed from the printed donor program for the Hale Foundation gala.
Tonight, they had seated her beside the service corridor in a wheelchair and treated her like a bankrupt relative being tolerated out of pity.
Elena’s eyes filled with tears.
Then something inside her went quiet.
She stood.
Slowly.
Pain tore through her side.
Her surgeon would have hated it.
Victor watched, amused.
“What are you doing?”
Elena held the edge of the table until the room stopped tilting.
Celeste smiled.
“You should sit down before you embarrass yourself more.”
Victor leaned in.
“You’re broke, Elena.”
The word again.
Broke.
As if repeating it could turn legal fiction into fact.
Celeste folded her arms.
“You don’t belong here anymore.”
Elena looked from one to the other.
Her tears stopped.
That frightened Celeste slightly.
Elena reached inside the cream coat draped over the back of her chair.
Celeste smirked.
“What? Another sob story?”
Elena’s fingers closed around the thick leather envelope she had carried into the ballroom.
She pulled it out.
Then opened it.
A stack of matte-black cards slid into her hand.
Not one.
Not two.
A thick stack.
Victor’s smile vanished.
Celeste’s eyes widened.
“What the hell…?”
Elena stepped toward her.
The pain in her abdomen did not disappear.
She simply stopped obeying it.
“You think I’m broke?”
Then she threw the entire stack into Celeste’s face.
Black cards exploded through the air.
Celeste screamed.
Several bounced off her shoulder.
Others struck the table, champagne glasses, linen, polished floor.
Guests recoiled.
“What are you doing?!”
Victor dropped to one knee and snatched up a card.
His face changed.
Another guest picked up another.
Then another.
Victor looked from the card to Elena.
“These are all yours?!”
Elena reached into the envelope again.
More cards.
She slapped a handful against Celeste’s chest.
“YOU CALLED ME PENNILESS?!”
Celeste staggered backward.
Elena threw the remaining cards over her.
They rained across her hair, her gown, the white linen at her feet.
“PICK ONE—”
Elena’s voice cracked across the ballroom.
“I’M GIVING IT TO YOU AS AN ACT OF CHARITY.”
Silence.
Victor stared down at the black card in his hand.
May you like
Celeste stood beneath a scatter of them, face drained of color.
And for the first time that evening, neither one looked certain Elena had lost anything at all.
