His Mother Offered Me Millions to Leave Him

The gallery was the kind of place that took itself seriously. White walls, track lighting, art that looked like accidents and cost like surgery. Kaisen stood beside me with a glass of something he wasn't drinking, and I was in the middle of telling him about Diane's latest inventory crisis when I felt it.

His stillness.

Not the usual kind — the controlled, deliberate stillness he used in boardrooms and at cameras. This was different. This was the stillness of a man who had just seen something that reached past his defenses before he could raise them.

I stopped talking mid-sentence.

I followed his gaze across the room.

She was standing near the far wall, holding a glass of white wine, looking at a painting she probably wasn't seeing. Late twenties, dark hair, a particular quality to her features that I couldn't name immediately. Pretty in a way that felt familiar, though I was certain I'd never met her.

Then I understood why she felt familiar.

I didn't know the dead woman's face from photographs. I knew it from the way Kaisen had gone completely still beside me, the way you go still when something reaches into a sealed room and opens a door you thought you'd locked.

I scanned the room without moving my head. Victoria was standing near the entrance, a glass of champagne in her hand, watching us with the particular satisfaction of someone who has just pressed a button and is waiting for the explosion.

I looked at the girl again. Then at Victoria. Then I set my own glass down on a passing tray.

'Excuse me for a moment,' I said.

Kaisen's hand caught my wrist. Not hard. Just a question.

'I'm getting more champagne,' I said, and smiled at him, and walked away.

I didn't go toward the bar.

---

The coat room was small and smelled like cedar and other people's perfume. I'd asked one of the gallery assistants to let her know someone wanted a word. I'd been specific about which someone.

Lottie Morris came in two minutes later, still holding her wine glass, her expression carefully neutral in the way of someone who has learned that neutral is safer than curious.

I closed the door.

'I'm not angry at you,' I said. 'I want to say that first, because what I'm about to tell you might sound like I am.'

She blinked. 'Okay.'

'Victoria Bishop found you through an agency. She told you this was a networking opportunity. She did not tell you that you were brought here tonight because your face resembles a woman who died, and that she planned to use that resemblance to destabilize her son's relationship.' I watched her face. 'You didn't know the full picture. That's not on you.'

The neutral expression cracked. Just slightly. Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass.

'How did you—'

'Because I know how she works.' I kept my voice even. 'She's been running variations of this play for months. You're the most creative version yet. I'll give her that.'

Lottie was quiet for a moment. I could see her processing it — the shape of what she'd walked into, the gap between what she'd been told and what was actually true. I recognized that look. I'd worn it myself, a long time ago, before I'd learned to see the architecture of a scheme before I was already inside it.

'So what do you want from me?' she asked. Her voice was careful. Not hostile. Just careful, the way you get when you've been used enough times to know that people who say they're not angry usually want something.

'I want to offer you a job,' I said. 'Real job. Real salary. My boutique in SoHo — you'd be working with my manager Diane, floor and client relations to start, more if you want it.' I held her gaze. 'No one asks you to look like anyone. No one asks you to be anyone's face. You just show up and do the work.'

She stared at me.

I let her stare.

'Why?' she said finally.

'Because Victoria sees a useful face. I see a person who got handed a bad script and deserves a better one.' I shrugged. 'Also, frankly, it annoys her. That's a bonus.'

Something shifted in Lottie's expression. Not quite a smile. Something quieter than that — the look of someone who has been seen clearly and isn't sure yet whether to trust it.

'Okay,' she said.

Just that. Okay.

I nodded. 'Diane will call you Monday.'

I opened the coat room door and walked back into the gallery. Kaisen was where I'd left him, his glass still untouched, his eyes finding me the moment I came back into the room. I crossed to him, took his arm, and steered us toward the nearest interesting painting.

'Everything okay?' he asked.

'Perfect,' I said. 'Tell me about this one. It looks like someone sneezed on a canvas and charged forty thousand dollars for it.'

His mouth curved. Barely. But it was there.

Across the room, Victoria was no longer smiling.

---

She found out within forty-eight hours. I'd expected twenty-four, so she was slipping.

The charity luncheon was at a hotel on Park Avenue, the kind of event where the table settings cost more than the cause and everyone pretended not to notice. I was seated three tables from Victoria, which meant she had to cross the room to reach me, which meant everyone in the room could watch her do it.

She did it anyway. I respected the commitment.

She stopped beside my chair, champagne in hand, and delivered her assessment with the gracious precision of someone reading from a very expensive script. My background. My motives. My fundamental unsuitability for the world I'd inserted myself into. Each sentence wrapped in the language of concern, of observation, of a woman who simply wanted what was best for everyone involved.

I ate my salad.

I let her finish. Every word. I didn't interrupt, didn't shift in my seat, didn't give her the reaction she'd come here to collect. Around us, the table had gone very quiet in the particular way of people who are pretending not to listen while listening to everything.

When she stopped, I set down my fork.

'That was thorough,' I said. 'You've been workshopping it.' I looked up at her. 'Here's the thing, Victoria. The check was the first attempt. The boutique opening was the second. Last night was the third.' I kept my voice pleasant, the way she kept hers pleasant. 'Three failures with three different strategies suggests the problem isn't tactical. It's structural. You keep underestimating what you're working with.' I picked up my fork again. 'I'd take the weekend. Reconsider the approach. Come back with something new.'

I turned back to my salad.

The table stayed quiet for another three seconds. Then the woman to my left asked the woman across from her about her daughter's school play, and the conversation resumed, and Victoria was left standing beside my chair with her champagne and her careful smile and nowhere left to put them.

I didn't watch her walk away.

I pressed my fingers briefly against the left side of my chest — that automatic gesture, that habit I'd never been able to explain — and reached for my water glass.

Outside the tall windows, the city moved on, indifferent and enormous, the way it always did.