As of two hours ago, Arthur, you have been removed as Chairman of Sterling Development.”

The ballroom detonated into whispers.

The city developers my father had been courting a moment earlier were suddenly staring at him as though he were a stranger, or a liability, calculating their own exposure.

And Chloe — Chloe looked from Julian to our father to me with a dawning, undisguised terror, because Chloe, whatever else she was, was not stupid, and she understood, in real time, that the lavish, gilded, comparison-winning life she had been handed was funded entirely by a chairmanship that had just ceased to exist.

I felt no triumph watching it, exactly.