Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: The Allegheny Hills Club
The Allegheny Hills Club had a doorman whose only job was deciding who didn't belong.
He looked at me the night I walked in with Veronica Taliaferro on my arm, and he decided I did.
It was a Friday, eight days after the lightning, and I wore a charcoal suit that fit my shoulders for the first time in my life.
Dex had picked the tie.
"Wear the blue," he'd said. "Blue says I have money and no feelings."
Veronica wore black, with a low back and her hair slicked behind her ears.
"Don't speak to anyone unless I tell you," she murmured as we crossed the marble.
"Who's going to talk to me?"
"Everyone. Gerald Maddox has been sending me emails for a week asking for an extension, and tonight he's chairing the charity dinner. He wants me to see how well he's doing."
"You brought me to watch him fail?"
"I brought you to watch him lie," she said. "It's the same thing, only slower."
The dining room was long and gold, with a hundred tables under a ceiling painted with ducks.
I had been to the back door of it once, at nineteen, delivering a box of linens.
Tonight I stood under the ducks with a woman who owned a piece of the man at the head table.
Gerald saw us before we reached him.
He was in a white dinner jacket with a carnation, the host of the evening, and he turned toward Veronica with a smile that had been waiting all week.
"Ms. Taliaferro," he said, warm as a bath. "You came. I told the board you'd come."
"Mr. Maddox."
"And you've brought a guest." He turned to me, and his hand was already out. "Gerald Maddox. Welcome to the club."
He didn't know me.
For four seconds the man who had told a hundred and twenty people I was a leech shook my hand and asked my name.
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