And typed three words.
PROJECT STERLING.
CANCEL.
My thumb hovered over Send.
Part of me wondered whether I was behaving emotionally.
Then I looked at Caleb.
Still seated.
Still silent.
I pressed Send.
Richard started toward me.
“Martha, please.”
Tiffany blinked.
“Dad?”
Richard ignored her.
“I didn’t know.”
I slipped my phone back into my handbag.
“Apparently there are several things you didn’t know tonight.”
“What is happening?”
Tiffany demanded.
Richard reached the center of the dance floor.
He looked as though he might be physically sick.
“Martha, please tell me you haven’t—”
My phone buzzed.
Daniel.
I expected two words.
Understood.
Instead, his message contained a sentence that made every sound in the ballroom disappear.
DO NOT LEAVE THE HOTEL.
WE FOUND THE SOURCE OF THE INTERNAL LEAK.
IT’S CALEB.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
My hands became cold.
For nine weeks, someone had been leaking confidential information from our Project Sterling review.
Nothing spectacular enough to attract law enforcement.
Nothing dramatic enough to appear in newspapers.
But someone outside Vance Global seemed to know exactly what our investment committee wanted before meetings occurred.
Debt models were revised suspiciously quickly.
Questions we intended to raise were answered before we asked them.
Proposed covenants appeared in Sterling’s drafts almost word for word.
Daniel had launched an internal security review.
We had assumed the leak came from an employee.
I looked across the ballroom.
At my son.
Caleb finally raised his eyes.
And when he saw my face, something changed in his.
Not confusion.
Not concern.
Fear.
Richard noticed.
So did I.
My heart began pounding.
Tiffany was still talking.
“Can somebody explain what is going on?”
Richard snapped, “Give me the microphone.”
“What?”
“Give it to me.”
She laughed.
“You’re being weird.”
“Tiffany!”
The sharpness in his voice silenced her.
He took the microphone and immediately lowered it.
Then he looked at me.
“Mrs.
Vance, I apologize.”
Tiffany stared.
“Mrs.
Vance?”
One of Richard’s executives had stood near the bar.
Another whispered something to his wife.
People began searching on their phones.
I saw the moment the first result appeared.
A young man at table nine looked from his screen to me with his mouth open.
Then the whispers started.
“Vance Global.”
“That’s her?”
“She owns—”
“Oh my God.”
Tiffany snatched someone’s phone.
Her face changed.
She looked at my photograph.
Then at me.
Then at Caleb.
“You told me your mother did bookkeeping.”
Caleb stood abruptly.
“Not now.”
My stomach turned.
I had never done bookkeeping.
Not professionally.
Not once.
Richard looked at his daughter.
“You insulted the chairwoman of Vance Global.”
Tiffany laughed once.
A tiny, disbelieving sound.
“What?”
“The company financing Sterling.”
Now everyone understood why Richard had dropped the glass.
Tiffany’s mouth opened.
Closed.
Then she turned toward me with breathtaking speed.
“Martha, I was joking.”
I almost admired the transformation.
Thirty seconds earlier I had been a pig.
Now I was Martha.
“I had too much champagne,” she continued.
“You know how my humor is.”
“No,” I said.
“I know how your character is.”
Several guests lowered their phones.
Tiffany flushed.
“Please, I didn’t mean—”
“You pointed at me.”
“I was drunk.”
“You were drunk when you picked my seat three months ago?”
Her face stiffened.
