Sophie looked directly at him.
“Would that have made her more scared?”
For a moment, Lorenzo said nothing.
Silas looked down, hiding the beginning of a smile.
Lorenzo nodded once.
“Take her upstairs with Mama.”
Sophie helped Isabella toward the side corridor.
As they moved away, Beatrice apparently decided the danger had passed.
She was wrong.
“This has gone far enough,” she said behind them.
“I have apologized for the misunderstanding.”
Lorenzo turned.
“You haven’t apologized once.”
Beatrice froze.
Several guests nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Fine,” she said.
“I apologize that your mother was upset.”
“That is not an apology either.”
Her composure cracked.
“What do you want from me?”
Lorenzo looked at the ballroom, the charity banners, the white linen tables and thousands of dollars of flowers.
“Nothing.”
Beatrice seemed relieved for half a second.
“I want everyone else to remember what they saw.”
That frightened her more.
Because Beatrice understood social power.
She understood that humiliation only mattered when other people agreed to carry it for you.
And the room had changed sides.
She tried one final weapon.
“My husband will hear about this.”
Lorenzo’s expression did not move.
“I assumed married people spoke occasionally.”
This time the laugh around the ballroom was impossible to suppress.
Beatrice’s cheeks burned.
She grabbed her evening bag and pushed through the crowd toward the exit.
No one followed her.
The security guards who had hesitated to help Isabella now opened the doors.
Upstairs, Sophie sat beside Isabella on a velvet sofa in the hotel library while Nurse Hopkins checked her pulse.
The room was dim and warm, far from the chandeliers and music.
Isabella still held the old photograph.
“Her heart rate is settling,” Nurse Hopkins said.
“You did exactly the right thing by getting her somewhere quiet.”
Sophie nodded.
Only now that the crisis was over did her hands begin to shake.
She tucked them under her apron.
Her phone vibrated inside her pocket.
A message from her staffing agency.
REPORT TO SUPERVISOR BEFORE LEAVING.
She did not need to ask why.
Maybe Lorenzo had embarrassed the supervisor into silence downstairs, but wealthy people went home.
Temporary workers still had to live with managers and schedules afterward.
She thought of the rent notice taped inside her kitchen cabinet.
She thought of Toby wheezing through the final doses of his inhaler.
“You’re worried,” Isabella said.
Sophie looked up.
The older woman was watching her with unexpected clarity.
