His mother, Brenda, a woman whose smile never reached her cold, assessing eyes, had despised me from the moment Alex introduced me. I was not “Sterling stock.” I was a scholarship kid who had attended the same university as her son, a nobody from nowhere, a stain on their impeccable family tree. Her disapproval was a palpable thing, a chill that followed me around the room.

She glided over now, a predator in a shimmering silk gown, her movements a study in practiced, effortless disdain. Her voice, when she spoke, carried with the precision of a trained actress across the polite hush of the room, a deliberate performance designed to draw an audience.

“Anna, my dear,” she began, her tone a perfect, condescending purr that made the hairs on my arms stand up. “I know you’re not accustomed to events of this… caliber. But one must try to keep up appearances. You are making the family look positively destitute.”