The police will handle the rest.

And you will have added a felony assault, witnessed by fifty people and recorded from four angles, to everything else you’re facing tonight.

So please.

By all means.

Try it.”

Preston did not try it.

He stood there, breathing hard, and looked wildly around the ballroom, and I watched him finally, fully understand the size of what was happening to him.

His high-society friends were no longer frozen; they were recording, discreetly, every second of his ruin on their phones.