The Hacker Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 23 of 32
Chapter 23: The Gala: The Mother
Nobody spoke for the length of one long breath.
Then the ballroom made a sound I will remember when I'm eighty, four hundred people shifting in their chairs at once.
It was like a field of wheat turning in the wind.
"Lucinda," a woman said at the second table.
She was the one in the sun hat, in a gown now, with her napkin balled in her fist.
"Did you just say you chose?"
"It was twenty-three years ago," Lucinda said. "I was thirty-two. You don't understand what I was facing."
"I understand a woman who kept a baby that wasn't hers," the woman said, "and let another woman bury her own."
She stood.
She picked up her bag and her wrap and walked out of the room.
The sound of her heels carried all the way to the doors.
It was the first.
A man in black tie followed her, then the heavy donor with the napkin still in his collar, then an old couple holding hands.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Hacker Heiress Strikes Back are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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