Hazel's POV
The night of the auction, the ballroom looked exactly the way galas always looked in this life I'd built, chandeliers throwing gold light across marble, two hundred well-dressed strangers murmuring over champagne, silverware chiming faintly against crystal glasses, none of them aware that somewhere above the central platform, a reinforced beam was quietly holding together a plan meant to hurt me. I wore emerald green instead of the pale, careful colors I used to choose to disappear into a room, the fabric catching the chandelier light every time I moved, and I stood taller walking in than I had ever once stood beside Julian in five years of marriage.
He kept his promise. All night, I could find him without searching, a steady point near the edge of the platform, close enough
