Chapter 4: Gull Point

For a moment, the ballroom went quiet.

Then a hundred reporters stood up at once.

"Mr. Penhurst, is Harbor Tower canceled?"

"How much did Penhurst Holdings have in the project?"

"Is the company solvent?"

My father put his hand over the microphone. Too late. It had already said everything.

The chief of staff looked down at it.

My mother sat very straight. The handkerchief was in her lap now, twisted into a rope.

Clarissa had both hands on her stomach.

"I don't feel well," she said.

For the first time in three years, nobody turned around.

Damon was staring at his phone.

I knew that look. I'd seen it on him exactly once, the day he tried to break off our engagement and Kessington stock fell nine points by lunch.

He turned the screen toward my father without a word.

My father read it and went gray.

Then my mother looked down the aisle at me.

It wasn't anger in her face.

It was fear.

"What did you do?" she said.

She didn't use the microphone. She didn't need to. The room had gone quiet enough to hear her.

Every camera swung back toward me.

"I didn't do anything," I said. "I left."

I stood up and put my paper cup on the coffee table.

I walked to the double doors.

The reporters pressed in so close a lens tapped my cheek.

"Noelle, did you know about Harbor Tower?"

"Noelle, is this revenge?"

"Noelle, anything to say to your family?"

I stopped in the doorway and turned around.

My father was still at the podium. Damon had Clarissa's elbow, but he was looking at me.

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