SHE KICKED THE MAID IN THE FACE AT THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS GALA OF THE YEAR—AND LAUGHED. SECONDS LATER, THE MAID CAUGHT HER ANKLE AND SLAPPED HER BACK. THEN SHE SAID FOUR WORDS THAT MADE THE HEIRESS GO PALE.

The ballroom of the Grand Vanderbilt Hotel smelled of stale money, expensive perfume, and the quiet desperation of people who measured their worth in square footage and offshore accounts.

I balanced a silver tray loaded with flutes of vintage champagne against my forearm, my posture rigid beneath the scratchy black-and-white uniform of a catering temp. My hair was pulled back into a tight, utilitarian bun, and a heavy pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of my nose, distorting my eyes just enough to make me invisible.

In a room full of billionaires, politicians, and socialite vultures, a maid was nothing more than furniture with a pulse.

That was precisely why I had spent three weeks bribing the agency coordinator just to get assigned to this specific floor.

“Champagne, madam?” I murmured, stepping smoothly into the path of a woman draped in enough canary diamonds to fund a small hospital wing.

Victoria Vanderbilt didn’t even look at my face. Her cold blue eyes remained locked on the CEO of a rival tech conglomerate across the room. With a dismissive flick of her heavily manicured wrist, she reached for a glass, her diamond tennis bracelet catching the glittering light of the crystal chandelier.

“Move, help,” she snapped, her voice like broken glass.

I didn’t blink. I stepped back, letting her take the flute, keeping my gaze respectfully lowered.

Twenty years.

Twenty years since my mother had been dragged out of this very hotel—her uniform torn, her dignity stripped away by a man who smiled for the morning papers while crushing lives behind closed doors. Twenty years of whispers, foster homes, cheap ramen, and a burning, unyielding promise I made over a cold, cheap headstone.

I looked across the ballroom toward the dais, where Arthur Vanderbilt stood shaking hands with the city’s elite, looking like the benevolent patriarch of New York society.