In eleven words on a stage, he answered it.

He had come the moment I sent for him.

He had looked, before anything else, at the hand that hurt me.

And now he stood between his daughter and the man who had thrown her down, in front of five hundred people and every camera in the room, and made it perfectly clear which of the two things in that ballroom he considered his: the company, or me.

It was not close.

It had never, I understood in that moment, been close.

And that was the last thing anyone said to Rupert Brandt inside Ellsworth Technologies.

Cressida tried to slip out through the kitchen, and security stopped her there too, and the silver dress that had made her look triumphant an hour ago now hung on her like cheap armor bought for a war she’d badly misjudged.

Chapter 16 — Who Enjoyed His Cruelty

I went back to the microphone, because there was one more thing that needed saying, and it needed saying by me.