The ballroom had simply been where the truth happened to come due, because that was where Damian had chosen to stage his coronation, and a lie staged in public tends to collapse in public.

I had not gone looking for a scene.

I had gone looking for a way to save eight hundred jobs and to stop a man from hurting the people in his reach, and the stage had been incidental to both.

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy and even flattering to claim I had been above the moment, untouched by the drama of it.

I was not above it.