Chapter 2: The Four-Hundred-Guest Coronation
The grand ballroom of the historic Halberg Hotel in downtown Chicago was an architectural masterpiece of gilded moldings, velvet drapery, and a two-ton crystal chandelier suspended from a vaulted ceiling.
It was also the very room where, fourteen months ago, Daniel had left me sitting alone at a corner table for three hours on my birthday while he entertained Vanessa in a private hospitality suite upstairs.
Tonight, the room was packed with four hundred of the city’s most influential power brokers, tech titans, and political figures. Media cameras from two local business stations were positioned at the perimeter, broadcasting what Daniel’s PR firm had aggressively marketed as ”The Tech Wedding of the Decade.”
On the screen of my tablet in the airport lounge, I watched the broadcast in real-time.
Daniel took the stage beneath the blazing crystal chandelier, holding a crystal flute of champagne in one hand and the wireless microphone in the other. Vanessa stood beside him in a custom Vera Wang gown that had cost sixty thousand dollars, beaming at the sea of flashing cameras.
