Not with a scream, or a scene, or tears.

With a stillness.

I wiped the water from my lashes, and I looked up at my father — at Arthur Sterling, beaming above me with his microphone, the king of the room, certain he had won this exchange the way he had won every exchange of my entire life.

“Remember this moment,” I said.

I did not shout it.

I said it quietly, so that he had to stop laughing to hear me, and the quiet of it was more unsettling than any shout would have been.

“Remember exactly what you just did to me, right here, tonight.