At the Team USA gala, Katarina finds herself face-to-face with Lee for the first time in nearly ten years. She has watched him from a distance on television and in tabloids as he sold stories about her while claiming he loved and missed her. Although her first instinct is to run, Katarina walks toward him cautiously and sees how much he has deteriorated: Lee looks thin, unfocused, and aged beyond his years.

Heath follows Katarina across the ballroom, immediately suspicious and ready to fight. When Lee says he was invited, Katarina confronts Ellis Dean, and Ellis admits he misled Lee by saying Katarina wanted to see him. Ellis frames the ambush as a chance for the siblings to clear the air, but Katarina recognizes that he is trying to create a spectacle for gossip. Lee insists he did not know it was a setup and pointedly invokes family in front of Heath.

Katarina remembers that, despite everything, she once tried to help Lee by offering through a lawyer to pay for rehab, an offer Lee ignored. She tells Lee he needs to leave and says she is willing to give him her number so they can talk privately later, not in front of a crowd. Heath warns Katarina, but she keeps trying to control the encounter without causing a public scene.

Lee ruins that possibility by grabbing Katarina's arm and accusing her of still thinking she is better than him. Katarina twists free easily, but Heath reacts instantly, seizing Lee's lapel and raging at him for touching her after all the harm he has done. Ellis halfheartedly urges calm even as onlookers gather and Bella heads toward the confrontation. Realizing Heath cannot be talked down and fearing headlines, arrests, and violence, Katarina redirects the moment the only way she can think of: she turns and slaps Ellis hard across the mouth.