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Red wine hit my face beneath a thousand glittering crystals, and the laughter that followed was even colder. Three wealthy young men thought I was a nobody they could humiliate for entertainment—but none of them knew whose daughter they had just drenched in front of half of Chicago’s elite. One second, I was standing beside a marble column inside the Bellweather Grand, holding sparkling water while hundreds of guests moved beneath enormous chandeliers. The next, cabernet poured over my brown hair, ran down my cheeks, and soaked the cream blouse I had bought for thirty-two dollars on clearance. For half a second, the ballroom went silent. Then Preston Hale looked at the empty glass in his hand and burst out laughing. “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were staff.”
After twenty months away saving my husband’s company, I came home with a suitcase full of toys for our four-year-old son—and found him crawling across the floor in clothes that no longer fit while my mother-in-law fed another little boy cake and said, “Now that is a child this family can be proud of.” My husband wouldn’t even look at me, so I smiled, asked for a glass of water, and decided not to give any of them time to hide what they had done. My name is Audrey Keller.