From a Humiliating Bet to the Boss He Can't Have novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: He Reached

Nobody moved while Blaine's words settled.

Then six hundred phones lit up at once, and the noise came back as a roar.

Cynthia's father took the headset off her head himself.

He did it gently, and she let him.

"Every entrant will be refunded," he said into the microphone, in the tired voice of a man doing arithmetic. "In full, tonight, from the trust. The hotel and the photographer will be paid out of my own pocket."

"Dad..."

"We'll discuss the rest at home."

A man near the front shouted, "And the police?"

"If the attorney general wants to speak to my daughter," her father said, "she will be available."

Cynthia stared out at the room.

Her mascara had run in two grey lines, and the cream suit looked slept in.

"You all came," she said, to nobody. "You all paid. You wanted it. I only gave you somewhere to put it."

No one laughed.

Someone near the back began to chant, quietly at first.

"Re-fund. Re-fund."

Cynthia took a step toward the wings, and a woman in the aisle held out her phone and filmed her face from a foot away.

Security met her at the steps.

She went with them, rigid, without looking back at Blaine once.

I stood at the center of the stage, with the microphone still in Nate's hand, and my knees were beginning to shake.

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