The Bloodline She Burned novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: What Dane Did

Roz did not argue with the bridge.

She stood at the podium with her mother's sketchbook under her hand and let the silence run.

Then she leaned to the microphone.

"My sister is right that I haven't been well," she said.

The hall shifted.

"I haven't had a full meal in a month, because my family cut off my phone and my money the day I left. I have slept on a couch in a cafe office."

She turned a page of the sketchbook toward the room.

"These pictures are real. The dates are real. Choose which of us you believe."

Nobody answered.

Then the man in the bow tie, who had given Camille the award, crossed the stage and took the glass trophy out of her hand.

"The Foundation will review this prize," he said, quite quietly.

"Please," Camille said. "You know me."

"Not tonight, Miss Ellsworth."

He carried the trophy offstage under his arm and did not look back.

In the front row, two men in dark suits got up together.

One of them leaned to Conrad and said a few words in his ear.

Roz did not need to hear them.

They were the men who sat at the head of Ellsworth Holdings' long table, and she had seen their faces at every Christmas party of her childhood.

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