Chapter 1: The Useless Nurse
The Grand Azure Ballroom of the Sterling Hotel was suffocatingly perfect. It reeked of imported white roses, vintage champagne, and old, cruel arrogance. Five massive crystal chandeliers cast a brilliant, fractured light over three hundred of the city’s most elite citizens. They sat at tables draped in imported silk, their diamonds catching the light as they murmured polite, billion-dollar pleasantries.
I sat at Table 42, tucked away in the far, drafty corner near the kitchen doors. I was twenty-eight years old, wearing a simple, fifty-dollar navy blue dress I had bought off a clearance rack. I was trying, as I had done my entire life, to remain completely invisible.
