Chapter 5
Across the room, near the entrance, I watched the elevator doors open, and my mother stepped out in a champagne-colored dress, Sarah a step behind her in silver, both of them clearly arriving uninvited, clearly having tracked down exactly where Victoria Chen had actually gone that night. My mother's eyes swept the room and landed on me, in my chef's jacket, standing beside the buffet I had personally designed, deep in conversation with the exact CEO she'd ordered me to abandon my career for.
She crossed the room fast, Sarah trailing behind, panic written plainly across both their faces.
"Lily," my mother said, voice tight, glancing nervously at Victoria. "What is the meaning of this? You said you had a business trip."
"I do," I said calmly. "Tomorrow morning. Tonight I'm working."
Sarah leaned in, whispering with desperate urgency. "Please don't embarrass me. I told everyone you were just helping out as a favor."
"I'm not the staff, Sarah," I said, loud enough that a few nearby guests glanced over. "I own this company."
Victoria, who had been watching the entire exchange with growing interest, set down her tasting plate. "Wait," she said slowly. "This is your family?"
"Yes," I said.
My mother forced a bright smile onto her face, the same smile she'd used my entire childhood to paper over inconvenient truths. "Victoria, I'm so sorry for the confusion. Lily has always been wonderful in the kitchen, it's really more of a hobby for her, she helps out at events like this sometimes—"
"Mrs. Sullivan," Victoria interrupted, not unkindly, but firmly, "your daughter built one of the most respected event companies on the East Coast. I've been trying to get a meeting with Stellar Events for over a year. I'm flying to Florida tomorrow specifically to sign a two-million-dollar contract with her company."
The room around us had gone quieter than I'd realized, several guests now openly watching.
My mother's smile faltered, then collapsed entirely. "Two... million?"
May you like
"She has fifty employees," Victoria continued, looking between my mother's stricken face and my own carefully composed one. "Three locations. I'd say that's considerably more than a hobby."
Sarah had gone pale, her champagne glass forgotten in her hand. I watched fifteen years of careful family mythology come apart in real time on both their faces, the realization landing that the daughter they'd kept in the kitchen, the sister they'd planned to use as free labor while courting her own client, had been the most successful person in either of their lives all along.
