She brought 38 country-club ladies to feast on my dime, until her son handed her the truth she was never supposed to hear.

"Try it again!" Theresa demanded, her voice breaking into a shrill, hysterical pitch that caused the dinner guests in the main foyer to turn and stare into the room. "Run it again right now!"

"Mrs. Stanhope, running a frozen card multiple times will only lock the terminal," David said firmly. "Do you have an alternative form of payment?"

Theresa looked around the room at her thirty-eight friends.

Every single one of them was backing away from her.

Eleanor pulled her fur coat tight around her shoulders, her expression transforming from friendly warm affection into cold, snobbish disgust. "Theresa, if there is an issue with your family's finances, perhaps we should leave and let you sort this out privately."

"No! Eleanor, wait!" Theresa pleaded, extending a hand. "It's just a clerical error! Mark's firm had a massive international transfer come through today—"

"I don't care about your son's firm, Theresa," Eleanor interrupted coldly, stepping past her toward the exit. "You invited us here under the pretense of hosting a lunch. If you cannot afford to host your guests, you shouldn't invite forty people to a five-star venue."

"Eleanor—"

"Good day, Theresa," another woman said, her nose held high in the air as she hurried out the double glass doors of the private salon. "We'll see ourselves out."

Within ninety seconds, thirty-eight impeccably dressed women filed out of Aura in single file, shuffling past the host stand with their heads down, desperately trying to avoid the eyes of the staff and waiting patrons.

Not one of them offered to help pay a single dollar of the bill.

Theresa stood alone in the center of the vast, empty private dining room, surrounded by thirty-nine dirty dessert plates, empty crystal wine glasses, and an itemized bill for $14,862.40 resting on a silver tray.

David stood by the door, two security officers in crisp black suits standing quietly behind him.