Chapter 9
He looked at her.
This woman he had bought a ring for.
This woman he had built a life around for three years.
This woman who had met his uncle Raymond and laughed at his jokes and said, on their second date, that family was everything to her.
"Did you ever love me?" he asked.
The question sat between them in the corridor.
Vanessa's expression moved through several things very quickly.
He watched each one arrive and be managed.
"That's not a fair question right now," she said.
"It's the only one I'm interested in."
She looked away first.
Behind them, in the ballroom, a chair scraped.
A murmur had begun to build among the guests.
And somewhere in that sound, Derrick could hear his mother's low voice — steady, unhurried — speaking to Uncle Raymond the way she used to speak to people who needed calming down.
She had always been good at that.
He thought about three days.
He thought about walking the last part.
"I need to call my lawyer," he said.
"Derrick, please don't do anything hasty—"
"I'm going to call my lawyer." He said it again, evenly.
"And then I'm going to go back in there and sit down next to my mother.
And after that, we're going to figure out what exactly I signed."
He turned and walked back toward the ballroom doors.
"If you do this," Vanessa said to his back, "my father will end your career."
He pushed the door open.
"He can try," Derrick said.
And walked through it.
---
## CHAPTER 6: Gerald Makes His Move
The ballroom had changed while Derrick was in the corridor.
The guests were no longer pretending.
Small groups had formed across the seating area — heads bent together, hands cupped near mouths.
May you like
The string quartet had quietly packed away their instruments.
The florist's assistant, a young woman who had been adjusting centerpieces near the back wall, had simply stopped and was watching openly.
