Chapter 2: The Name on the Screen
Madison grabbed the microphone stand with both hands.
"That's enough," she said.
"He's a child.
He doesn't know what he heard."
But Ethan didn't let go.
Nathan stepped closer.
His voice was quiet.
Controlled.
The way it gets when he's not angry yet but almost there.
"Madison.
Step back."
She turned to face him.
For a moment something crossed her face that I hadn't seen before.
Not embarrassment.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
"Nathan, listen to me.
Claire put him up to this.
You know what she's like.
She has always resented us—"
"I didn't tell him anything," I said.
"You didn't have to." Her voice sharpened.
"You've been poisoning him against me for months."
My mother set down her glass.
"Claire, if you coached that boy—"
"Diane." Nathan said it once.
Flat.
And my mother went silent.
The whole ballroom was watching now.
Nobody pretending to look elsewhere.
Ethan's chin was up.
His eyes were on Nathan.
"She was on the phone," Ethan said into the microphone.
"She didn't see me.
She said—" He paused.
"She said the money was the only reason."
Nathan's face didn't move.
"What money?" he asked.
Ethan looked at me.
Then back at his uncle.
"She said once the account was in her name, she wouldn't have to pretend anymore."
A woman somewhere in the back of the room gasped.
Madison's hand dropped from the microphone stand.
And then her phone lit up on the sweetheart table behind her.
The screen faced the room.
Everyone near the front could see the name.
I saw Nathan see it.
His jaw tightened.
"Who is Daniel?" he said.
---
What Nathan found on that phone changed everything.
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