The Ballroom Debt

The Grand Ballroom of the St. Jude Hotel smelled of expensive lilies and the metallic, ozone tang of a closing trap. Elena Vance smoothed the silk of her gown, the fabric feeling less like couture and more like a shroud. Every pair of eyes in the room tracked her progress, not with the warmth of a social peer, but with the clinical curiosity of spectators at an execution. She had exactly forty-eight hours before the bank liquidated her family’s remaining estate—a deadline Marcus had whispered to her like a death sentence two days ago.

"Elena. You look... remarkably composed for a woman whose bankruptcy is the evening’s primary gossip."

Marcus stood by the champagne fountain,

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