Chapter 1 - The Cake Was Not for Fighting
Claire Radford shoved Jada Marlow so hard that the rainbow cake collapsed around her.
A glass stand struck the marble. Cream splashed across Jada's blue dress. Three hundred guests stopped talking beneath the lanterns outside the Hudson River manor.
"Oops," Claire said, smiling.
Jada had spent seven years building an arts residency for people who could not afford to work without pay. She had counted pennies and slept on studio floors. But she had never been pushed into a dessert table by the woman hired to raise money for it.
"You did that on purpose."
"Prove it."
Jada caught Claire's wrist when she stepped forward again. She guided her into a chair, grabbed a slice of ruined rainbow crepe cake, and pressed it against Claire's face.
"Oops," Jada whispered back.
The word tasted rotten before she finished saying it.
"Please stop," a young voice said.
Theo Ames, the volunteer painter hanging the artists' portfolios, stood beside the display. His eyes were not on Claire. They were on the twelve applicants watching from the lawn.
Jada released Claire immediately. A photographer's flash burst. Security moved between them. Claire screamed that Jada was fired, as if she owned the program.
"I should not have put my hands on her," Jada told the guard. "I will give you a statement. But she pushed me first. Please preserve the footage."
Eleanor Ashe arrived, tapping her cane against the marble. She had founded Hudson Colors with Jada. She looked at the broken stands, then at the terrified applicants.
"Nobody decides a person's future beside broken glass," she said.
The cake designer, Min Seo, was already directing her staff away from the sharp pieces. "You both owe my team an apology," she told the women.
Jada nodded. Then Theo showed her a photograph of four place cards prepared before the party. Each read OFFICIAL RESIDENT. None of those four names appeared on the jury's signed selection list.
"Claire told me to print these," he said. "I thought the vote changed."
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Jada's phone lit up with an anonymous message: You saw the fake names. Check who has the keys to the studios before midnight.
