Thirty Days to Prove Them Wrong

Chapter 4

A Text About a Grandfather

The first official event was a charity gala three days later, and by the time I put on the rented suit Diane's assistant had dropped off for me, tailored, expensive, and somehow still managing to feel like a costume, I understood I was about to be inspected by an entire room of people who already knew exactly who I wasn't.

Vivian met me in the foyer looking like she'd rather be anywhere else on earth, in a dark green dress that probably cost more than my truck, her expression set in the particular calm of someone who had rehearsed how to survive an evening she hated.

"Rules," she said, without a greeting. "You don't leave my side unless I say so. You don't discuss anything real about yourself. If anyone asks how we met, we say a mutual friend introduced us six months ago. Can you remember that?"

"I've held down a job before. I can remember a cover story."

"This isn't a job, it's a performance, and I need you to actually be good at it."

"Noted."

The gala was held at a hotel downtown that made Verdine look modest by comparison, and the second we walked in, I felt every eye in the room do the same slow inventory Vivian's had done that first night, clothes, watch, shoes, hands, cataloging exactly how much I didn't belong.

"Vivian, darling!" A woman I didn't recognize swept toward us, air-kissing Vivian on both cheeks before turning her attention to me with undisguised curiosity. "And this must be the fiancé everyone's talking about."

"Dean," I said, offering a hand.

"Charming," the woman said, in a tone that suggested she meant the opposite, before steering the conversation immediately back to Vivian and a business deal I didn't understand the context for.

It went like that for the better part of an hour: introductions where I was acknowledged and then immediately dismissed, conversations that flowed around me like I was furniture, occasional pointed questions about my "line of work" that I deflected as vaguely as I could manage. Vivian, for her part, played her role flawlessly, laughing at the right moments, touching my arm when the script called for it, giving no indication whatsoever that any of it cost her anything.

I was starting to think I might actually survive the night without incident when Rex found us near the bar.

"Dean," he said, clapping me on the shoulder like we were old friends. "Glad you could make it. Vivian, you look stunning, as always."

"Rex," Vivian said, in a tone that made it clear the feeling wasn't mutual.

"So," Rex said, turning his attention fully on me, loud enough that a few nearby heads turned. "I've been curious. What exactly do you do, Dean? Vivian's been suspiciously tight-lipped about it."

"I work in logistics," I said, which was true enough not to trip any wires.

"Logistics," Rex repeated, drawing the word out like it amused him. "That's a nice way of saying warehouse work, isn't it?"

The nearby conversations quieted slightly. I felt Vivian tense beside me.

"It's honest work," I said evenly.

"I'm sure it is." Rex smiled, the kind of smile designed to look friendly to everyone except the person it was aimed at. "It's just funny, isn't it? Vivian Whitmore, whose family's been in this city's business circles for three generations, engaged to a guy who loads trucks for a living. Quite the fairy tale."

A few people laughed, that soft, cruel laugh people give when they want plausible deniability about having laughed at all.

"Rex," Vivian said sharply.

"What? I'm just saying what everyone's thinking." He turned back to me, still smiling. "No offense, man. I actually respect it. Takes a certain kind of confidence to walk into a room like this knowing everyone's doing math on your net worth and coming up with a number that fits in a checking account."

I felt my jaw tighten, felt the old, familiar heat of humiliation I'd spent years learning to control rise up my neck. I thought about every boss who'd ever talked down to me, every classmate who'd laughed at secondhand clothes, every moment I'd swallowed exactly this kind of comment because fighting back never changed anything except making the moment worse.

"You're right," I said, keeping my voice level. "I don't have your kind of money. I've never had it. I've worked every job I've ever had with my own hands, and I've never once needed someone else's name to walk into a room."

Something flickered across Rex's face: not quite anger, more like he'd expected a different reaction and didn't know what to do with this one.

"Cute speech," he said, recovering. "Real inspiring. Anyway..." He turned back to Vivian, dismissing me entirely. "You still owe me that dance you promised at your mother's dinner last month."

"I didn't promise anything," Vivian said coldly.

"Details." Rex extended a hand toward her, and for a moment I genuinely thought she might actually take it just to end the conversation faster.

She didn't. She stepped slightly closer to me instead, close enough that it looked deliberate to anyone watching. "I'm here with my fiance tonight, Rex. Maybe find someone else's evening to ruin."

Rex's smile thinned, but he raised both hands in mock surrender and melted back into the crowd, throwing one last look over his shoulder that promised this wasn't over.

Vivian didn't look at me once he was gone. She grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and handed me one without a word, staring at the room like she needed a second to compose herself.

"You didn't have to do that," I said quietly.

"Do what?"

"Step in. You could've let him keep talking. It would've made your job easier, honestly, if people thought less of me."

She finally looked at me, something unreadable in her expression. "I don't like bullies," she said simply. "Doesn't matter who they're bullying."

It wasn't warmth, not exactly. But it was the first thing she'd said to me that didn't sound like it came from a rehearsed script, and for reasons I didn't fully examine yet, it mattered more than it should have.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I almost ignored it, given where we were, but something made me glance down anyway.

An unknown number. A text with no name attached, just three words that stopped my whole chest cold.

"We need to talk. About your grandfather."

I stared at the screen for a long moment, the noise of the gala fading into the background, Rex's insults and Vivian's unexpected defense both forgotten in the face of a sentence I hadn't seen coming from anywhere.

"Dean?" Vivian's voice, closer than I expected. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I didn't answer right away. I was too busy wondering how anyone in this city, anyone outside the three people who knew the full truth of where I came from, could possibly know I had a grandfather worth mentioning at all.