Chapter 1 - The Twenty Thousand Dollar Plate
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Celeste Bennett removed her daughter’s name card while two hundred guests watched.
“Your sister’s engagement dinner is twenty thousand dollars a plate,” she said, her voice dropping to a harsh, manicured whisper. “Please don’t make this difficult.”
Forty feet away, an empty chair waited beneath the photographer’s lights—and Norah was beginning to understand that it had never been meant for her.
Norah kept her hand on the velvet chair a moment longer, as though touching it could preserve the place she had been promised. Around her, crystal chandeliers scattered light over diamonds, champagne, and faces carefully arranged to look interested in something else. Her mother folded the crisp white card once and slipped it into her beaded evening bag.
“Not this table,” Celeste said, not quite meeting her eyes. “We’ve made an adjustment. The aesthetic for the photos needs to be very specific tonight.”
Behind her, Vanessa stood beside her fiancé in a champagne-colored gown that caught the light whenever she breathed. Ethan Shaw, heir to a massive real estate fortune, glanced toward the chair, then toward Celeste, looking mildly uncomfortable but ultimately silent. Norah waited for someone to explain why her name had been printed in gold foil if she was never supposed to sit down.
“It’s just seating, Nora,” Vanessa said softly, stepping forward. “Don’t let it ruin the night. We all have our roles to play.”
Only her sister called her Nora. Only when she wanted to make Norah sound smaller, stripping away the elegance of her full name.
A waiter appeared beside them, his expression painfully neutral. He gestured toward a round table beside the swinging kitchen doors, where drivers, security staff, and two catering supervisors were eating between assignments. The table had no flowers. It had no silk napkins.
May you like
Norah looked at her father. Richard Bennett lowered his gaze to his wine glass, swirling the dark red liquid.
That was the part that hurt. Not her mother’s voice, which she knew too well. Not Vanessa’s almost-apologetic, thinly veiled cruel smile. Her father had seen everything, and he had chosen the glass in his hand over his youngest daughter.
