Chapter 6 6

Giselle was on her hands and knees.

The position was obscene for a woman of her station-Chanel skirt rucked up, stockings snagged, her body sprawled across the coffee table as she tried to corral the photographs into some semblance of containment. Her fingers trembled, making the task impossible, scattering the images further with every desperate grab.

Chloe stood frozen, her eyes tracking from one photograph to another, her mind refusing the synthesis.

"What-" Her voice cracked. She tried again. "Mother, what are these?"

"Don't look!" Giselle's head snapped up, her face a mask of fury and terror. "Don't you dare look at them!"

"Your mother's early career," Evelyn said. She had not moved from the sofa, had not raised her voice. "Before she became Mrs. Brock. The Hamptons yacht circuit. Very lucrative, for a woman with her particular talents."

Giselle howled.

She seized the teapot-the same one that had burned her earlier, still half-full of cooling liquid-and hurled it at Evelyn's head.

Evelyn didn't flinch.

She tilted her head six inches to the left, and the pot passed her ear close enough to stir her hair, close enough to feel the displaced air. It struck the wall behind her and exploded, porcelain shrapnel scattering across the floor.

She stood. Brushed at her coat.

"That was poorly considered," she said. "The video files are already uploaded. Timed release to Page Six, TMZ, and the Times business section. Tomorrow morning, unless I stop them."

She withdrew a USB drive from her pocket, held it up between two fingers like a cigarette.

Giselle's eyes locked on the device. She scrambled off the table, lunging, her hands outstretched in a gesture of pure need.

Evelyn sidestepped.

Giselle's momentum carried her past, into the space where Evelyn had been. Her heel caught on the carpet's edge and she went down, hard, her hip striking the marble floor with a sound that made Chloe wince.

Evelyn looked down at her.

"Chloe's admission to Brown," she said. "The 'legacy preference' that Giselle boasts about at every charity luncheon. Do you know what it cost?"

Chloe's hands found her ears. "No. No, you're lying-"

"Dean of admissions," Evelyn recited. "September 14th, 2019. Room 847, the Four Seasons. Forty-seven minutes. The wire transfer cleared the following Tuesday."

The precision was devastating-dates, locations, durations. Chloe's hands fell from her ears. Her knees buckled, and she found the edge of a chair, lowering herself onto it as if her bones had been removed.

"Your entire life," Evelyn said, "is built on transactions. Your mother's body. Your father's silence. The pretense that any of you deserve what you have."

Giselle dragged herself upright. Her hair had escaped its arrangement, hanging in gray-streaked strands across her face. She positioned herself between Evelyn and Chloe, a mother protecting her young, her eyes burning with a hatred that had festered for decades.

"You," she spat. "You and that lunatic mother of yours. You belong in the gutter. You belong in the dark. You should have died with her, you miserable-"

The temperature in the room dropped.

Evelyn's posture changed-some subtle shift in her shoulders, her hips, the angle of her chin. The languid contempt evaporated, replaced by something that seemed to compress the air around her, that made the light in the room feel insufficient.

She walked toward Giselle.

Each step was deliberate, unhurried, and with each one the sense of threat intensified. Giselle retreated, her back finding the marble bar, her hands groping behind her for support that wasn't there.

"Arland will destroy you," she said, her voice high, desperate. "He'll have you committed. He'll have you-"

Evelyn's hand shot out.

Her fingers closed around Giselle's throat, lifting, compressing. Giselle's feet left the floor, her heels drumming against the marble, her hands clawing at Evelyn's wrist with the futility of a bird against glass.

"You," Evelyn said, her voice barely above a whisper, "do not speak her name."

Giselle's face purpled. Her eyes bulged, found Chloe, pleaded.

Chloe saw the brass letter opener on the bar-heavy, ornate, sharpened to a functional edge. She seized it without thought, her fingers wrapping around the familiar weight of her father's desk accessory.

"Let her go!" she screamed.

She charged.

Evelyn's eyes never left Giselle's face, but something in her posture shifted-microscopic preparation, weight transferring to her back foot. She was waiting. She had known.

Chloe raised the opener high, aiming for the space between Evelyn's shoulder blades, for the heart that she couldn't see but could imagine, that she wanted to stop-

Evelyn's lips curved.

She didn't turn. She didn't need to.