Chapter 3

I had almost made it to the door.

The last word spoken. I had done the thing I came here to do and I had said the thing that needed saying, and the only move left was to walk out and let the door close behind me.

Then a hand closed around my arm and yanked me backward.

The grip was hard enough to hurt, fingers digging in with a force that had nothing graceful about it, and I stumbled before catching my balance and turning around.

Saira had crossed the room in the time it took me to take three steps. The mascara track on her face was still there and her gold hair was still half-undone, and the look she was wearing now had moved past the performance of wounded dignity into something that was simply, plainly furious.

"Where do you think you're going?" she said.

I looked down at where her hand was still locked around my arm. Then back up at her face.

"I'm not finished with you," she said.

I tilted my head. "That's funny. I thought I made it fairly clear that I was finished with you." I glanced at her hand. "Let go."

She didn't let go. She leaned in, dropping her voice. "You think that little stunt with the mirror means anything? You think one smug line makes us even?" Something behind her eyes had turned very cold. "I'm going to make sure every person in this city knows exactly what you are. I'll ruin your face and your reputation at the same time, and by the time I'm done, you won't be able to walk into a room in New York without people laughing at you. Permanently."

She had clearly expected me to flinch.

"Let go of my arm or I'll let go of it for you," I said. "And we both know how that ends."

Her free hand came up fast, going for my face — the second time she'd tried that same move. I caught her wrist before she reached me and pushed her back with enough force that she had to take two unsteady steps to stay upright.

She recovered her balance and immediately turned away from me.

"Aaron." Her voice switched registers completely — brittle, shaking, performing devastation for an audience. She crossed to him and pressed herself against his side. "She attacked me again. She grabbed me. You saw it."

Aaron's eyes had been on us the whole time. He hadn't moved from where he stood near the entrance, hadn't intervened, hadn't spoken. Now he looked at Saira's face, then at me, and something settled into his expression that was neither surprise nor anger but something more deliberate than both — the decision of a man choosing a position.

He put his arm around Saira.

"Whoever puts their hands on someone under my protection," he said, his voice carrying across the room without raising itself, "answers to me. That's not a warning I repeat."

He glanced to his left, a single brief movement.

Two of the men who had come in with him — large and silent in dark clothes, positioned near the entrance — stepped forward.

I understood what was happening about a second before it happened. I got one of them with a kick that connected solidly enough to make him exhale, but the second one was already behind me and there were arms around both of mine before I could turn, and then my knees hit the floor with a crack that sent a bright pulse of pain up both legs.

The room had gone very still.

I was kneeling on the atelier floor, both arms held, the gown still on my body. I kept my breathing even and my face as neutral as I could make it and looked straight ahead.

Aaron looked down at me with an expression that was almost thoughtful. Then he turned to Saira.

"Do whatever you want," he said. "I'm on your side. Whatever happens here, that doesn't change."

The smile that spread across Saira's face was the most honest thing I had seen from her all afternoon.

She walked toward me and the red heels clicked against the floor with a slow, satisfied rhythm. She stopped in front of me and looked down, savoring it — the room, the position, the audience, all of it exactly where she wanted it.

The first slap landed before I had finished reading her expression. Then the second, hard enough that the room tilted slightly and the inside of my cheek split against my teeth. I felt the heat of it spread across both sides of my face before the pain properly arrived.

Then her heel connected with my stomach.

The breath left me completely and I folded forward. I held myself there for a moment, taking careful stock of the damage and deciding that nothing was broken, that the people in this room who were watching without intervening would remember this moment for the rest of their lives.

I straightened back up and looked at both of them.

"I want you to understand something," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I had expected. "I won't let either of you walk away from this."

Saira's smile widened. "That's adorable." She glanced around at the room with theatrical delight. "Where's all that confidence from five minutes ago?"

She turned to the nearest stylist and extended her hand.

"Scissors," she said.

The stylist looked between us. His hands were shaking. Saira's gaze didn't move from his face, and after a moment he reached to the workstation beside him and placed the dressmaker's scissors in her palm.

She held them up so I could see them clearly. Let me see them catch the light.

"You're wearing my dress," she said. "So I'm going to take it back. One way or another."

She moved toward me and the scissors cut into the silk at the shoulder seam. The sound it made was very clean. The gown — four hundred thousand dollars of ivory silk and cathedral train — began to come apart with a precision that made several people in the room look away.

I did not look away.

She worked slowly, deliberately, the way someone does when they want to make certain you understand every second of what is happening. The silk fell in sections. The bodice gave way. The air of the atelier reached my skin.

I kept my eyes on her face and did not move and did not make a sound.

When she was satisfied, she stepped back and looked at me the way you look at something you have finished with. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. The camera opened. The record light came on — the same small red blink as before — and she angled it directly at me.

"Say it clearly," she said. "For the camera. 'I am a lowly little nobody who doesn't belong here. I apologize to Saira Stein for wasting everyone's time.' Say it loud enough for the audio to pick up." Her voice dropped into something almost gentle with cruelty. "I'll send this to every outlet that covers New York society. Every account, every blog, every gossip column that follows the Scott family. By tomorrow morning, the only thing anyone knows about Aaron's fiancée is this video."

The room was watching.

I said nothing.

Aaron hadn't moved from where he stood. He was watching with his arms crossed and an expression of absolute indifference, as though this were a minor administrative matter being resolved on his behalf.

"Who are you, really?" he said. The question wasn't curious. It was dismissive. "You're a name on a piece of paper my father signed. You're the token someone offered up to close a deal. That's the beginning and the end of what you are to me." He held my gaze for a moment longer and then looked away, as though I had already ceased to be interesting.

Something in my chest contracted with a cold, hard anger that I did not let reach my face.

Saira kept the camera steady, watching me over the top of it, waiting with the patience of someone who was confident she had already won.

The phone in my jacket pocket — the clothes beneath what remained of the gown — buzzed.

Saira heard it. Her eyes dropped to my pocket and then came back up to my face with a new sharpness. She reached forward and pulled the phone out before I could angle away from her, and when she looked at the screen her smile changed into something that recognized an opportunity.

She answered it.

"Hey." Willie's voice came through the speaker, warm and unhurried, carrying the particular ease of someone who had no idea what he was walking into. "Did you find a dress? You've been in there a while."

"Willie." My voice came out raw. I couldn't keep it level this time. "Willie, get here. Someone's attacking me — she's cut the dress off me, she has people holding me down, she's filming me—"

"She's fine," Saira said into the phone, smooth and bright, angling it away from me. "She's just being dramatic. Your little sister came in here and made a scene and now she's learning what that costs. Don't worry about it. We'll be done with her soon."

The silence on the other end lasted exactly two seconds.

When Willie's voice came back, it was a different voice entirely. The warmth was gone. What was underneath it was something I recognized from the few times in my life I had seen my brother genuinely angry — not the performed anger he used in business, but the real thing, which was quiet and absolute and had no interest in negotiating.

"Put my sister on the phone."

"I don't think so," Saira said lightly.

"I'm going to say this once." Willie's voice was so controlled it was almost soft. "Let her go. Right now. Put her on the phone. And if a single hair on her head is out of place when I get there, there will not be a version of what happens next that you come back from."

Saira laughed. It was a bright, contemptuous sound that she aimed at the room, inviting everyone present to share in how seriously she was not taking this.

"Come on then," she said. "Let's see it."

She dropped the phone on the floor. The screen cracked on impact. The call didn't end — somewhere in the shattered screen, Willie's voice was still speaking, too quiet now to make out the words — and Saira turned back to me with the camera raised again, the record light blinking red, waiting.

I looked at the phone on the floor. At Saira's face above the lens. At Aaron across the room, arms still crossed, watching with the patience of someone who had already decided the outcome.

I breathed in through my nose and said nothing.

And I waited.