Chapter 16: The Landing

"Chose," Brooke said.

She said it out loud, in the middle of the broken glass, and three hundred people heard her.

Preston let go of my elbow.

"Brooke, darling," he said, in his stage voice. "You're overwrought. Let's step out."

"Chose what?"

"We'll talk upstairs."

"Say it here."

The string quartet by the window had stopped playing. A waiter knelt to pick up glass and froze with a shard in his glove.

Preston took his wife by the wrist and walked her toward the curved staircase at the side of the ballroom.

She went, because she could hardly do anything else with everyone watching.

I went after them, with Maxwell one step behind me.

Halfway up the stairs, on the wide landing under the chandelier, Brooke pulled her arm free.

From there the whole ballroom could see them, and the whole ballroom had gone silent to look.

"Dad said it was only until the debt was cleared," she said. "He told me that at the house. I thought he meant a loan for the business."

"Brooke."

"What did you pay him for?"

"Not here."

"What did you pay him for, Preston?"

His smile stayed where it was. It was the one he used on bankers.

Then I watched it go.

I had seen him lose a client and a building, and I had never seen his face do what it did then.

It went tired and contemptuous.

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