Emmett set down his champagne glass and walked toward the stage like he'd been planning this moment for weeks. He probably had.
Victor Hale stepped aside without being asked. That told me everything about how thoroughly this had been arranged.
Emmett took the microphone with the ease of a man who had never once doubted a room's willingness to listen to him. He let the murmur settle. He smiled—that slow, warm smile that had once made me feel chosen.
'I hate to interrupt the evening,' he said, 'but I think we have a small situation that needs a moment of everyone's patience.' He paused, tilting his head toward me with an expression of affectionate exasperation. 'My fiancée—God love her—seems to have found herself a little short on the winning bid. Two hundred million is a big number.' A beat. A chuckle from somewhere in the room. 'I'm sure she'll sort it out. She always does. We just ask for your understanding while she works through the details.'
He handed the microphone back to Victor and stepped off the stage, adjusting his pocket square.
The room applauded. Lightly. Politely. The way rooms applaud things they don't fully understand but are willing to find amusing.
Dalia watched me from the table. She lifted her champagne flute an inch—a private toast—and took a slow sip.
I didn't move for three full seconds. I let my breathing stay even. I let my face stay still.
Then I picked up my clutch and I started moving.
---
I'd spent four years in this city. Not performing, not collecting contacts the way Emmett did—like trading cards, like leverage. I'd done it quietly, genuinely, because I was interested in people and because I was good at seeing what they needed before they asked for it.
I thought that meant something tonight. I was wrong.
I found Daniel Cho near the bar. He ran a tech firm I'd personally introduced to three separate investors two years ago. The introductions had made him a great deal of money. He saw me coming and I watched something happen behind his eyes—a quick calculation, a door closing before I'd even knocked.
'Brooke.' He shook my hand. His grip was brief.
'Daniel. I need a short-term bridge—a few hours, fully secured. I can have documentation to you by morning.'
He looked at the floor. Then at a spot just past my shoulder. 'I'm sorry. I'm not in a position right now.'
'You're not in a position,' I repeated.
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The answer was already in the way he'd stopped meeting my eyes.
I moved on.
---
Sophia Reyes ran three galleries and had once told me I had the best eye for emerging artists of anyone she'd met outside New York. I'd spent an afternoon helping her authenticate a piece that would have been an embarrassing purchase. She owed me nothing legally and everything practically.
'I can't,' she said. She said it before I'd finished the sentence. 'I'm sorry, Brooke. I really am.'
The sorry was real. I could hear it. It didn't change anything.
---
I tried two more. A venture capitalist who'd once called me at midnight to ask my opinion on a deal. A woman who ran a private equity firm and had sat next to me at a dinner three months ago and said, unprompted, that I was one of the sharpest people she'd met in LA.
Both of them looked at me like I was already gone.
The room felt smaller with every no. The chandeliers kept burning gold. The conversations kept flowing around me, easy and bright, and I moved through them like a current no one could see.
---
Marcus Webb was my last option and I knew it.
He was standing near the terrace doors, a glass of whiskey in one hand, watching the garden lights. Marcus was a real estate developer who had made a significant mistake on a zoning contract two years ago. I had quietly pointed him toward the right attorney before it became public. He had never forgotten it. He had told me, more than once, that he owed me one.
I touched his arm. He turned.
And I saw it immediately—the same thing I'd seen on every other face tonight, but worse. Because on Marcus's face there was something that looked almost like grief.
'Brooke.' He kept his voice low. He glanced once toward Emmett's table. 'I got a call this morning. From the Dean family.' He paused. 'I can't risk it. I'm sorry. I genuinely am.'
I looked at him for a moment.
'How early this morning?' I asked.
He blinked. 'Seven. Maybe seven-thirty.'
Seven in the morning. Emmett had been making calls at seven in the morning. While I was asleep in the apartment we shared. While I was making coffee. While I was texting him messages he was reading and not answering.
He hadn't decided to trap me tonight. He'd built the trap over days, maybe longer, and then walked into this ballroom and smiled at me like a man with nothing to hide.
'Thank you, Marcus,' I said. 'For telling me.'
He nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else. He didn't.
I walked back toward my table.
Every door in this city had just closed in my face. Emmett had seen to that with the same careful attention to detail he'd once used to plan our first trip together, our first real dinner, every gesture that had made me believe he was someone worth erasing myself for.
I sat down. I folded my hands on the table.
I touched my watch.
And I thought about my father.
