Silas reached inside his jacket while my brother stood behind him with his champagne glass frozen halfway to his mouth.
For one strange second, the entire back corner of the ballroom seemed to hold its breath.
Then Silas pulled out a slim black folder.
Nothing about it looked dramatic.
No gold seal.
No flashing screen.
Just an ordinary folder with papers inside, the kind of thing Caleb probably walked past a hundred times every week at Nebula.
But I recognized it immediately.
Silas placed it on the table beside the plastic bucket of crayons.
“You vanished before we finished discussing the next phase,” he said.
I glanced at Caleb.
His face had gone completely still.
“I didn’t vanish,” I said.
“I told your office I had a family wedding.”
Silas looked around at the high chair, the chicken nuggets, the sleeping great-aunt and the dragon-covered napkins.
His eyebrows rose.
“This is the family wedding?”
Leo, who had no understanding of corporate hierarchy and therefore possessed more courage than anyone else in the room, pointed at Silas.
“You’re sitting in my cousin’s chair.”
Silas looked down at the tiny chair beneath him.
“My apologies.”
Leo considered this.
“You can borrow it.”
“Generous of you.”
The nanny covered a laugh with her hand.
Caleb did not laugh.
He stepped forward.
“Mr.
Vance, I’m sorry.
I didn’t realize you knew my sister.”
Silas turned toward him.
The expression on his face wasn’t angry.
That somehow made it worse.
“Knew her?”
Caleb swallowed.
I could almost see him recalculating every assumption he had made in the last twenty minutes.
Silas rested one hand on the folder.
“Lena has been working with my office for months.”
Caleb blinked.
“Working with… Nebula?”
“With me.”
The words landed softly.
Across the nearest tables, people had begun pretending not to listen.
They were failing.
Caleb looked at me.
“You never told me.”
There it was.
Not an apology.
An accusation.
I leaned back in my folding chair.
“You never asked.”
“I asked what you were doing.”
“You called it my little blogging thing.”
His jaw tightened.
Silas’s gaze shifted between us.
I could tell he understood more from that single exchange than Caleb wanted him to.
