My husband had just slapped me hard enough to split my lip in front of four hundred guests, and nobody inside the Weston Grand ballroom in Philadelphia looked horrified. They looked embarrassed for him, mildly annoyed with me, and fascinated the way wealthy people always are when they believe ruin is happening to someone beneath them.
I did not cry.
That surprised them more than the slap.
I knelt on polished marble with one hand pressed to the stinging side of my face, my mouth filling with that warm metallic taste, and I listened to the whispers rise around me under chandeliers that cost more than most families earned in a decade. The string quartet had stopped mid-phrase. Waiters in white jackets stood frozen, trays balanced in their hands. Women in silk gowns leaned toward one another behind diamond-heavy fingers. Men in tuxedos frowned like I had interrupted a market report rather than been struck across the face by my husband.
Prescott stood over me breathing hard, his nostrils flared, his expression twisted into the kind of righteous fury men like him call self-control after it is already gone.