Chapter 19: Know Your Place

I walked Brooks up the steps to the stage himself.

He came without being pushed.

That was the part I remembered afterward: how fast he went once he had no one left to send.

Bea's cousin set a microphone on the stand.

The big screen behind us was still black.

A hundred and twenty investors turned their chairs.

My father stood in the aisle with his hands in his jacket pockets.

Rafe stood by the stage steps and watched me, and did not smile, and I felt every second of his attention on my back.

"You said you'd sign anything," I said.

"I did."

"I don't want a signature yet. I want you to read me three lines."

Brooks swallowed.

"What lines?"

I handed him my phone.

On the screen were three sentences, typed out by Bea that afternoon from the raw recording.

"You'll read them in the voice you used on me," I said. "Loud, so the back row hears."

He looked down at the screen.

His lips moved without sound.

"Sylvie. Please."

"Read the first one."

"Remember what you were before I picked you up."

His voice was small.

"Louder."

"Remember what you were before I picked you up."

A woman near the front put a hand over her mouth.

"The second."

"You don't get to question me, Sylvie."

"Again, like you meant it."

"You don't get to question me!"

It rang through the ballroom, and he flinched at the sound of it.

Nobody laughed this time.

Nobody was whispering.

A hundred and twenty people were sitting very still, and every one of them knew whose voice that was.

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