Chloe did not lower her voice for Elena.

It did not occur to her to.

In Chloe’s mind, and in the minds of everyone in my glittering circle, the room contained exactly one person who mattered, the dying billionaire, and one person to be careful around, the same, and the woman with the flowers was not a person at all, but a fixture, a function, part of the furniture, no more capable of hearing and understanding and acting than the IV stand or the window blinds.

And that contempt, that failure of imagination, that inability to see a human being standing in plain sight, was not merely rude.