"We're done," Brielle said, lifting her champagne so the chandeliers caught the rim like a blade. "You can't mean that," Quinn said. He had that pleading look he kept for boardrooms and family funerals. He sounded smaller in the ballroom than he had any right to be. "I mean exactly that," Brielle said. Her voice cut through the string quartet. Glass paused mid-air at a neighboring table. "Do you know what this does? To our families, to—" "To your fantasy," Brielle snapped. "Not to my ledger." "Eleanor," someone whispered and a hand reached for the matriarch's sleeve. Eleanor Bennett sat like a judge whose gavel had been misplaced. She smiled with one corner of her mouth and said, "Finish, Brielle." Quinn took a step forward. "Bri, you promised. We told the city—" "You told," Brielle corrected. "I bargained. You paraded me like an asset." A laugh broke somewhere to Brielle's right. Henley Mendes tightened her hold on the companion's arm and looked ready to pounce. "This was a contract," Quinn said. "We can—" "Change the terms? No." Brielle leaned forward until the pearls of her necklace highlighted the line of her jaw. "I never agreed to be your public trophy. I never agreed to be collateral for whatever your father promised mine." "Manners," an uncle hissed. "In public." "Excuse me," Brielle said. She raised her hand and the slap landed across Quinn's cheek with a clear, almost surgical sound. The room shifted. Conversations