Alora's POV
Her name was Margaret Colton.
I knew this because Diana's briefing notes had included her — Senator Colton's wife, active in foundation circles, long-standing Miller Corp donor relationship, approach with warmth — and because the woman who cornered me near the champagne station at the two-hour mark had the specific energy of someone who had been the most socially powerful person in her particular radius for long enough that the habit of wielding it had become unconscious.
She was perhaps sixty. Immaculate in the way that money and time and the specific discipline of a woman who understood that appearance was infrastructure could produce. Pearls. A gown the colour of champagne. Hair that had been silver for long enough that it had become a choice rather than a concession.
She came to me when I was alone.
