Chapter 28
Anthony
The ballroom is all light and illusion.
Crystal chandeliers throw fractured gold across the ceiling; champagne flutes catch it and scatter it again in a thousand tiny sparks.
A string quartet plays something elegant enough to make people feel virtuous about their own wealth.
Donors and executives drift in loose groups, laughing in that polished way people laugh when they’ve paid to be seen doing good.
I move through it like it belongs to me because it does, in the way everything does when you’ve written the checks and built the scaffolding. My tux fits like armor. My smile is practiced. My handshake is firm, my voice measured, my eyes always scanning.
I haven’t spoken to April Swan in days.
Her silence sits under my ribs like a bruise you can’t stop pressing. No reply to the photo. No call. No text. Just absence. Just the vacuum where her voice used to be.
I told my team to put her name on everything. I told them to prepare her entrance, to have a stylist ready, to have a seat reserved at my table like a vow written in linen and place cards. I did it like a man who thinks spectacle can replace an apology.
Now I keep looking at the entrance as if staring hard enough will conjure her into existence.
“Anthony.”
Joseph Brant materializes at my side with a drink in his hand and a look on his face that says he’s been watching me watch the door.
He’s one of the few men in my orbit who can speak to me like a person instead of a title.
Fellow board member. Friend. The kind of friend you earn through mutual scars.
“You’re pacing,” he says dryly.
“I’m circulating,” I correct, voice calm. I lift a glass from a passing tray without tasting it. “This is what I’m supposed to do.”
Brant’s gaze flicks toward the podium at the far end of the room where the evening’s speeches will happen. “And Karen is supposed to wait,” he says. “But she won’t.”
My jaw tightens. “No.”
He leans in slightly, shielding his words behind the music and the murmur. “Your security report?”
“Confirmed,” I say. “Aidan Snow’s counsel tied into her legal team. Overlap in calendars. Shared contacts. It’s interference. It’s coordinated.”
“Can you prove coercion didn’t happen?” Brant asks quietly, and there’s no judgment in it—just reality.
The question is a fist closing around my throat. I stare into my champagne like it might offer a better answer than the one I have. “I can prove she agreed,” I say. “I can prove she signed. I can prove the money transferred under legal terms.”
Brant’s eyes narrow. “And in the court of public opinion?”
I feel something cold settle behind my sternum. “In the court of public opinion, a powerful CEO and a younger employee looks like a headline no matter what the truth is.”
Brant exhales. “It’s going to be her word against yours.”
“And Karen will make sure it sounds like April’s word,” I say, the bitterness sharp. “Even if April never opens her mouth.”
Brant watches me for a moment. “Have you heard from her?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
His expression shifts — something like sympathy, which is worse than contempt. “Anthony…”
“I sent her a photo,” I admit, and the admission tastes like ash. “Aidan leaving a café with her. Karen sent it to me. I reacted.”
Brant’s eyebrows lift. “You walked into a trap. And you accused her.”
“I implied,” I say tightly.
“Same thing.”
I turn my head slightly, scanning the room again — red hair, dark hair, jewels, black ties, white teeth. No April. No green eyes behind glasses. No wavy blonde hair. No familiar posture trying to look composed while the world watches.
“I don’t think I can save it,” I say, low enough that only Brant hears.
The words come out before I can stop them, like the truth has been waiting all evening for a crack in my control.
“I can fight Karen. I can fight Snow. I can fight the board. I can fight the press. But I can’t fight the damage I did to her. ”
Brant’s gaze stays on my face. “You think it was doomed from the start.”
I swallow, jaw flexing. “I do not think I managed it well.”
Brant’s mouth twitches, not amused. “You don’t manage love,” he says. “You show up for it.”
The sentence lands harder than it should. Like he’s reached inside my chest and flicked a switch I didn’t know existed.
I show up for acquisitions. For negotiations. For battles. For quarterly targets and hostile rooms full of people waiting for me to blink.
Love isn’t a room I’ve ever walked into without trying to control the outcome.
My fingers tighten around the stem of the glass. “I tried to show up,” I say, but it sounds weak even to me.
Brant’s eyes flick to the door again, then back. “Then keep showing up,” he says. “If she comes tonight, don’t talk like a man with a strategy. Talk like a man who means it.”
If she comes.
The words loop in my head as Brant is pulled into a conversation with another board member. I let him go and keep moving, smile set, posture perfect, eyes hunting.
Minutes stretch. Ten become twenty. The room fills, the donation boards update, and the auction items draw little clusters of interest. I don’t feel confident. I feel like I’m waiting to be hit.
I check my phone once discreetly.
Nothing.
The podium lights up. The quartet softens. People drift toward their seats with the obedient rustle of expensive fabric. Applause begins in polite waves as the emcee welcomes everyone, thanks sponsors, names causes, reads numbers designed to make generosity sound glamorous.
My table has an empty seat with a card that reads A. Swan in crisp black ink. It stares at me like an accusation. I try to keep my face neutral, but God, it’s hard.
Then Karen Bartley stands.
She moves toward the podium with the ease of someone who has always known the room will watch her when she wants it to. She’s dressed in a sleek and pale white dress that makes her look like she belongs under a spotlight. Her smile is warm, controlled, and charitable.
A performance.
My spine stiffens. Every instinct in me tightens like a wire. This is her moment, and I know it before she’s even opened her mouth.
The microphone catches her voice perfectly. “Good evening,” she says, and the room responds with appreciative murmurs. “Thank you all for being here. We’re gathered tonight for an important cause, and I’m grateful for your generosity.”
She pauses, gaze sweeping the crowd. Then her eyes settle, deliberately, on me.
“And,” she continues, tone shifting into something more serious, “I believe it’s also important that we hold ourselves to the same standards we claim to support.”
A ripple of confusion passes through the crowd. A few heads tilt. I feel Brant’s eyes on me from across the room.
Karen’s voice stays calm. “We cannot stand here and speak about protecting the vulnerable while allowing exploitation to thrive in our own leadership.”
I suck in a breath. The ballroom seems to constrict; the air changing.
Karen’s gaze doesn’t leave me. “I’m speaking,” she says, “of Anthony Voss.”
Silence drops hard enough to feel physical. My pulse stays steady through sheer discipline.
Karen lifts her chin. “There is proof,” she says, each word measured for maximum damage, “that our CEO exploited a vulnerable employee. Someone younger, in a weaker position, someone who was taken advantage of and coerced into an arrangement that benefited him.”
A few gasps ring out through the crowd. Someone whispers. A chair scrapes faintly.
Karen’s voice grows more righteous, more certain.
“This is abuse of power. This is misconduct. This is a stain on this company and on every person who stands by and says nothing.” She places a hand on the podium like she’s steadying herself against heartbreak.
“And for the sake of Voss & Bartley’s integrity—”
She turns her head slightly, addressing the board members in the room as if we’re already in session.
“I demand he step down.”
For a single beat, I feel the night tilt.
Not because I’m surprised. I expected a move. I just didn’t expect her to do it here, in front of donors and cameras and reporters who will turn this into headlines before dessert is served.
And I can’t defend myself the way I would in a boardroom without turning the gala into exactly what she wants — a spectacle. A bloodbath.
I force myself to stand. It’s slow. Controlled. The chair doesn’t scrape. My jacket falls perfectly into place. Every eye in the room is on me now.
“Karen,” I say into the hush, my voice carrying without a microphone because I know how to command a room. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
Her smile sharpens, triumphant. “Is there ever a good time to address abuse, Anthony?”
A flashbulb pops. Someone shifts. The air tastes metallic.
I keep my gaze steady. “You’re harming the company with this,” I say, clear and firm. “If you believe there is an issue requiring governance action, we will address it through proper channels. The board can convene. We can vote. Not in a ballroom in front of donors.”
Karen’s eyes gleam. “Proper channels,” she repeats softly, like it’s a joke. “So you can bury it. So you can silence it.”
Murmurs spread. The crowd is hungry in that sick, human way — people who came for charity now feeding on scandal. But my eyes desperately flick once more to the entrance.
Still no April.
Without her, Karen gets to paint whatever story she wants. Without her, it’s my word against a room that loves a downfall. Without her, the empty seat beside me becomes proof, not omission.
My throat tightens, not with fear of Karen, not with fear of Aidan Snow or the board or the press.
With the sudden, brutal sensation that this is what losing looks like.
Not a vote. Not a lawsuit. But a woman not walking through the door.
I keep my face composed as the room buzzes louder, cameras turning, whispers multiplying, Karen standing at the podium like she’s already won. Inside, something cold spreads through me with a dreadful calm.
Everything is slipping, everything I built, everything I tried to protect, and I’m standing in the center of it, looking at an empty doorway, thinking one helpless thought over and over—
Where is April?