Chapter 1
The champagne tasted like battery acid, but she kept drinking it just to have something to do with her hands.
Mara stood near a massive drooping potted fern, trying to merge her silhouette with the shadows cast by the crystal chandelier overhead. The air conditioning hummed a high, thin note that vibrated in her back teeth, and it did nothing to cut the stifling heat generated by four hundred people packed into a room, all wearing wool suits and heavy silk.
She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. A sharp sting shot up her heel. The shoes were a size too small — borrowed, or rather demanded, from a cousin who had left them in the hallway three years ago. The leather was stiff, biting into her Achilles tendon with every micro-movement. She winced and took another sip of the lukewarm champagne. It was sour. She swallowed it anyway.
Stop slouching. You look like a question mark.
She didn't need to turn her head to know her father had materialized beside her. Elliot Ashford smelled of cheap peppermints and the stale sweat of a man who knew his bank accounts were overdrawn. His tuxedo lapels were slightly frayed at the edges — a detail he had tried to fix with a black Sharpie in the car ride over.
My feet hurt, Mara said. Her voice was flat, devoid of complaint, merely stating a fact.
Everyone's feet hurt. He hissed, his eyes darting across the room, tracking the movements of the city's old men and banking executives. He reached out and pinched the fabric of her sleeve. Pull this up. The neckline is sagging. I didn't pay a tailor twenty dollars to have you look like a discarded curtain.
Mara looked down at the dress. It was a hideous shade of bruised plum. It used to belong to her older sister, Delia. Last season, it had been a floor-length gown. This season, after an unfortunate red wine spill, it had been unceremoniously chopped at the knees, the waist taken in awkwardly, so that the stiff taffeta dug right into Mara's ribs. It made it hard to take a full breath.
Where is your sister? Elliot muttered, ignoring Mara's silence. He craned his neck. Mara already knew. She pointed a single unmanicured finger toward the center of the room.
Delia was holding court near the ice sculpture — a swan melting slowly under the hot venue lights, dripping water onto the linen tablecloth. Delia looked flawless. She wore emerald green, a color that made her skin look like porcelain and her eyes look dangerous. She was laughing, tossing her head back, her hand resting lightly on the forearm of a junior senator.
There she is, Elliot breathed, a mixture of pride and frantic calculation in his voice. Good. She's talking to the Harrison boy. If she can secure a dinner invitation this week, the bank might give me a thirty-day extension. He didn't look at Mara. He rarely did, unless there was a loose thread to pull or a posture to correct.
Mara was the backup plan — the collateral, the body brought along just in case an extra chair needed filling. She was twenty-three, two years younger than Delia, and entirely invisible. She preferred it that way. Invisibility was safe. When people didn't look at you, they couldn't ask you for things you didn't have.
Stay here. Don't eat any of the hors d'oeuvres. You'll drop crumbs on the silk. And for God's sake, try to look pleasant. He practically jogged away, disappearing into a sea of black tuxedos.
Mara let out a slow, measured breath. She watched the room. It was a charity ball, though nobody actually cared about the charity. The banners read something about children's hospitals, but the real business was being conducted in the corners, in the tight handshakes, in the forced smiles.
May you like
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Reveal
