Women grabbed handbags. Men abandoned drinks. Guests who had laughed at me minutes ago suddenly became very interested in leaving before they were seen in the wrong story. Staff scattered. Someone knocked over a table of cupcakes. A socialite in pearls nearly tripped over a balloon arch trying to get to the side exit.
Chelsea, of course, could not bear the spotlight leaving her.
She slid out of her throne, clutched her stomach, and let out a shrill cry that froze everyone in place.
“My baby!” she screamed. “Oh my God, the stress—Caroline, you’re hurting him!”
She crumpled to the floor in a heap of silk and dramatics.
Derek dropped beside her with all the sincerity of a man auditioning for cable television. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted. “If anything happens to my son, I’ll sue every one of you!”
I stared at them.
When we were kids, Chelsea once faked an asthma attack to get out of a math test. She had lain on the nurse’s cot with one eye cracked open to see if anyone looked concerned enough. Weaponized fragility was her favorite language. The bigger the audience, the worse the symptoms.
Hudson pressed closer to me, frightened by the screaming.
That made my decision easy.
I bent, lifted the knitted blanket from where it had fallen the second time, tucked it under my arm, and took Hudson’s hand. Benjamin guided us toward the doors while my sister shrieked behind us and my brother-in-law threatened legal apocalypse.
We did not look back.
The helicopter ride to Manhattan should have felt triumphant. Instead, it felt like leaving a war zone with smoke still in my lungs.
Hudson fell asleep halfway through the flight with his head against my shoulder, one small hand curled around the fabric of my sleeve. Benjamin sat across from us, close enough that our knees touched, his expression calm, but I knew him well enough now to recognize the steel underneath.
My phone started vibrating before we even cleared Long Island.
Then again.
And again.
I made the mistake of looking.
Photos. Headlines. Comment sections multiplying by the second.
Jealous sister attacks pregnant woman at lavish baby shower.
Mystery billionaire rescues emotionally unstable relative.
Insiders claim long history of envy and dependence.
Someone had already fed the tabloids a narrative, and I didn’t need three guesses to know who. The articles used one cropped photo of Chelsea on the mansion steps, tears on her face, no mention of the floral installations, the Bentley, the throne chair, or the insults that came before it. In another frame, I looked cold simply because I was blinking at the wrong moment. Strangers in the comments called me a gold digger, a parasite, a bitter woman punishing her younger sister for getting the life she wanted.
Derek understood public poison. If he couldn’t overpower Benjamin legally, he’d try to make us expensive to defend in the court of opinion.
I read until the words blurred.
Benjamin leaned over, took the phone gently from my hand, switched it off, and slid it into his pocket.
“Enough,” he said.
I looked out the window at the black water below. “They never stop.”
“They only look unstoppable when you’re standing inside the blast radius,” he said quietly. “Out here, they’re just panicking.”
My secondary phone rang.
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