Wealth.
I never realized it had a scent, but I’d been away from Eastridge for so long, I almost couldn’t recognize the familiar stench as it assaulted my nostrils. Prior to last week, I’d never been inside a Prescott Hotel before. I had no intention of stepping foot in another after I finished my internship.
It reeked of wealth I’d worked so hard to distance myself from.
So pretty. So fragile. So breakable.
It reminded me of a snow globe. A picture-perfect world trapped within delicate glass that would shatter if handled too roughly. Just like my world had shattered four years ago.
The features spoke of wealth. Marble lobby. High ceilings. Over-the-top chandeliers. A floating pool built one hundred feet into the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that I could picture my mother here had me looking over my shoulder as I dipped back into the ballroom from the restroom.
“Adagio for Strings” and the hushed sound of the country’s top point-one-percenters living their best lives accosted my ears.
Most of the hotel remained in a partial construction stage, waiting for finishes, flooring, and paint. You wouldn’t know it if you stood inside the ballroom.
Over the past week, I’d helped furnish half of the suites on the sixteenth floor, the main part of the lobby, and the ballroom for a masquerade party my boss had dropped on us last minute.
We were designers, not event planners. But Chantilly viewed the masquerade as an opportunity to cement her name as America’s foremost designer. I saw a thinly veiled attempt at assuring the who’s who of North Carolina were on board with the fast-tracked creation of this hotel.
Worse, Reed had promised I wouldn’t be in the same room with Nash, yet I felt him here tonight with intimate, uncanny precision I had no business possessing. Dipping past a group of men discussing Chinese tariffs, my skin tingled from the sensation of being stared at.
I’d felt it all night, two eyes tracking each step I took. I needed to run. I also needed money for food, loans, and penance.
Pivoting abruptly, I gave the source no time to turn away as I tracked him down. Two brown orbs watched me from three tables over. Their owner lifted a glass to me. I struggled to place him beneath the distance and his distinct, emerald-colored masquerade mask, but I knew it wasn’t Nash.
The eyes were wrong.
The lashes too short.
The hair too orderly.
The goosebumps on my arms too absent.
Neither of us broke eye contact, even when my vision blurred and I spelled cryptoscopophilia in my head. The urge to secretly peer in windows of homes as one passes by. Except it was a mask my eyes itched to stare past.
The stranger unsettled me, like my brain knew something the rest of me didn’t. Reckless. Gutsy. Stupid. I wouldn’t argue against any of these descriptions of me as I planted my feet and tilted my chin up—daring him to approach me.
Reed always hated this side of me, but I could never fight it. I was made to go down swinging, which explained why I wouldn’t be the first to lose the stare-down, except an arm latched onto my hand and jerked me toward the wall.
Countless politicians canvassed the room with their Aubercy shoes and artificially whitened smiles, extracting votes from rich men who expected favors in exchange for money. Businessmen dressed in Dormeuil flipped from conversation to conversation, sealing investment deals and assuring business contacts of past opportunities.
Near the open bar, socialites gossiped about illicit affairs and unsuspecting victims wearing last-season gowns. Over a hundred people shared the room with me, yet Chantilly managed to isolate me in the corner. She harrowed me with problems I had no intention of solving.
My skin continued to prickle, and I fought the temptation to turn and see if the masked man still stared at me. Worse—I dared him to. I’d be the first to admit I’d grown more reckless in the past four years. (And I’d already been reckless to begin with.)
“Where the fuck is the caviar?” Chantilly waved her arms until the strap of her gown slid down her bony shoulders. Shifting with me as I tried to dodge her, she backed me into the wall. “Fuck me! We need the caviar.” Her wild hands gestured to the throngs of guests behind her. “Which one of us is fucked if someone complains that there’s no caviar? Me! I need the fucking caviar, Rhodes.”
She’d managed to use fuck as a noun, verb, and adjective. Her Vancouver accent sharpened with each shrieked syllable. She reminded me of Moaning Myrtle, and I couldn’t escape her on account of her being my boss.
I pictured myself as the storm outside, whipping around the room until dresses flowed with water and conversations halted. Until silence met my ears, and I found peace for the night. Until I wiped the ballroom of its occupants, except for myself and the food.
I spelled the word procellous on the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue and focused on my red-faced boss. Hunger pains pinched my sides. I fought them and lost, clenching onto Chantilly’s shoulders a little tighter than necessary. I turned her toward a waitress the modeling agency had sent to us.
Blonde hair rested in a severe bun on the top of her head, paired with dramatic black eye shadow and a suit dress she wore absent of a shirt or bra beneath. She held the tray out to guests, but she walked so slowly in her six-inch heels, she must have been new—to heels and to catering.
“Maybe one of the male models can take her place so she can rest her legs,” I suggested.
We both watched her skinny legs wobble.
They weren’t skinny in the way mine were. Hers spoke of intention, sculpted with lean muscles and a tan that looked natural but I knew from experience wasn’t. My legs resembled two sallow, vegetative twigs that told tales of poverty and malnourishment.
In the past four years, I’d lost weight off my already slender frame. My hip bones jutted out, taunting me with the food I craved but couldn’t afford. That was my mission tonight—binge eat free food. I had no doubt Chantilly would be an obstacle.
“We don’t pay for servers to take breaks.” Her head shook in furious waves. She lifted her hand to scrub at her face but stopped the instant her palms brushed her mascara-coated lashes. “No breaks,” she repeated. “That’s what the complimentary Red Bull and caffeine pills we provide are for.”
For a second, she abandoned her hatred of me and took off after the poor waitress, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but relief. Chantilly had done everything except take out an advertisement announcing her disdain for me.
My first day of employment had begun with a speech on nepotism as the eighth deadly sin and spiraled downward since. I didn’t dare mention that I’d never actually met or talked to Delilah, because knowing Delilah was infinitely better than knowing Reed or Nash. Chantilly’s head would probably explode if she learned I knew the Prescott brothers.
I popped out my phone, rereading my messages from Ben. My lifeline. My single thread of sanity this past week.
Durga: Tell me not to quit. I need this job, but my boss is borderline abusive. It’s driving me insane.
Benkinersophobia: You—the woman who told me to guzzle a gallon of TheraFlu and suck it up when I thought I was dying from the fucking bird flu—want to quit? There’s a word for this. Irony? No… Oh, wait. Hypocrisy. That’s the word I’m looking for.
Durga: Ha. Ha. You’re so funny. Laugh it up. I’m miserable.
One text, and he’d cured me. I swore, he could bottle himself up, sell it, and become as rich as Nash.
Benkinersophobia: You aren’t miserable. You are the person who sees beauty in every situation. The one I turn to when I’m stressed and need someone to lift me up. Someone so strong, I marvel at your existence. You know what you’re not? You. Are. Not. A. Quitter. You are a warrior, but it’s okay not to feel like one all the time. Even warriors take breaks.
Durga: I almost don’t want to ever meet you. You’re too good to be true.
Benkinersophobia: I’m not. I’m a full-time dick. Just not to you.
Durga: No one else gets the Nice Ben treatment?
Benkinersophobia: My mom.
Durga: Ah. A mama’s boy. There’s the thread that pulls apart the hot man fantasy.
Durga: Thank you.
Benkinersophobia: If it’s any consolation, my night is shit. I’m spending it with uptight dicks whose favorite games include Whose Net Worth is Bigger? and How Punchable Can I Sound Without Actually Getting Punched?
Durga: Misery likes company. Have fun suffering.
Benkinersophobia: Ass.
I pocketed my phone, a smile on my face that Ben never failed to stamp there. With Chantilly gone, I pivoted in the other direction, narrowly avoiding this month’s Forbes 30 under 30 cover model.
What had I said to Nash Prescott all those years ago?
Aren’t you supposed to be in New York, opening some destined-to-fail business venture?
Well, that business venture had turned into the first Prescott Hotel, which soon morphed into a second. Then a third. Then a fourth. Until the Prescott Hotels brand cemented itself as one of the most well-known and coveted luxury hotel companies in the world. A powerhouse hotel chain that put names like Hilton and Kensington to shame.
The boy who borrowed suits from my dad and spent his nights getting in fights had become the king of Monopoly, collecting property even when it wasn’t his turn. I wanted to hate him for it. I couldn’t. Not after what had happened to Hank.
A hand caressed the fabric of my dress, followed by a compliment intended to stroke my ego. I smiled politely at the girl, told her I absolutely died over her Carolina Herrera gown I’d seen on two other women tonight, and snagged a gruyere sandwich from a waiter before she could sentence me to mundane conversation.
When I finally made my way back to the table, the emerald-masked stranger had left. I gave myself two-and-a-half seconds to indulge my fantasies of stealing all the food in the ballroom and slipping upstairs to the sixteenth floor. All my worldly possessions sat in a closet there.
A crate of plain Winthrop Textiles t-shirts.
My t-shirt printer.
A cardboard box of random knick-knacks and jeans.
Pricey tourist traps like Haling Cove were a real estate investor’s dream. An excess of small units crammed into sky-high buildings, then up-charged by five-hundred percent. Rather than choose between food and shelter, I slept in the closet.
It felt duplicitous, but so was getting a job at Nash’s company without him knowing.
Beggars can’t be choosers, Emery.
Shuffling through the crowd and into a small opening, I came face-to-face with one of Dad’s old friends. He stood in a corner, his gray hair glistening as he spoke to an older couple.
“Have you considered investing through a new firm? The stock market is ever changing, but at Mercer and Mercer, we are always ahead of the curve.”
Yeah, through insider trading.
I pretended I had something in my nose when a guest stared at me.
Dad once told me the Mercers had spies inside every large American corporation and had made a science out of insider trading. I’d balked at the idea back then, but now, it seemed like the least significant crime in a room full of people who had done worse than my dad and only hated him for getting caught.
I dodged past Jonathan Mercer, fake smiling at his mistress who clutched onto his arm with her umber coffin nails. The tight corset of my floor-length gown labored my breaths. I plucked a bottle of water from the bar, ignored the persistent feeling of being stared at, and chalked it up to paranoia. The sensation often pricked my skin since my last semester at Clifton, after everyone had figured out who I was.
The dress I’d repurposed from a woven black curtain I’d found at a swap meet had the distinct displeasure of being made from black-out fabric. I stopped for drink breaks every fifteen minutes to fight the heat, alternating between ice water and Amaretto sours because something had to make this night tolerable.
I pressed my back against the standing freezer, exactly where the dip in the dress exposed a stretch of skin. The thigh-high slit had risen from half-assed stitch work, but it did the job. I looked like I belonged here, which pissed Chantilly off.
I’d done nothing to her, yet she’d hated me from the moment I stepped foot into this building a week ago. I slanted my head until my hair covered my face and adjusted my self-made masquerade mask. Too many familiar people here to take chances.
A violent thunderstorm brewed outside, but you wouldn’t know it with the way the investors laughed and drank without a care in the world. Meanwhile, Chantilly had sent the other intern off to make sure our back-up plan was ready in the likely event the storm made its way inside. Hannah had been stacking buckets in the utility closet beside the ballroom all night.
Two shoes popped into my line of sight, and I followed them to their owner, a Daniel Henney lookalike. The Roman nose, sharp brown eyes, and gentleman’s cut—all eerily familiar echoes from a past I’d rather bury.
Still, my skin itched.
I tried and failed to place him.
Chantilly eyed me from across the room as he offered a hand.
“Brandon. Brandon Vu.”
He spoke without the North Carolina accent I loved, his voice stripped of identity and stamped with the General American label. Generic. Boring. Another clue to a puzzle I yearned to unravel.
I swore I knew him from somewhere. Skimming his features once more triggered nothing. I hated puzzles I couldn’t solve; I was better off ignoring him and occupying my mind with food. The urge to flee the hotel and chase the petrichor forced my toes to curl inward and dig into the soles of my Converse.
Brandon’s hands lingered in the space between us, but he kept his grin easy until I caved and folded my palm into his.
Pretending I didn’t feel the heat from Chantilly’s glare, I added, “Emery.”
Instead of shaking my hand, he pressed a kiss against my knuckles. Warm breath teased my skin until he released my hand.
“I know.”
He stared at me like a cat stared at a mouse caught in a trap.
No remorse.
No guilt.
Unsatiated, waiting for his prey to die.
You should have run, I scolded myself.
Still, my feet remained planted on the freshly milled Macassar ebony. I forced my eyes to his and scanned his face.
No recognition.
Nothing.
Just a twinkle in his eyes I didn’t like nor understand.
