But most important, she would talk when she returned to the city next week. The girls always talked. That was why everything she saw this weekend must be first class, the best. Even the sex. Cino was less than half his age but she’d developed some kinky tastes in her twenty-two years; she liked it rough—as long as she didn’t end up with any bruises—and Milos was more than happy to accommodate her. She’d talk about the sex and everything else, and he needed her to describe it to her friends and acquaintances as the best. Because they would quote her in their circles and that would spread to other circles and soon all the insiders would know about Milos Dragovic’s Memorial Day Weekend parties and wish they’d been invited… and they’d vie to be asked to his next gala.

And that vying would spill over to his club. When Belgravy opened in the fall, it would be the place to be.

Cino barely dented the cushion as she alighted next to him.

“Share what?” she said, showing perfect teeth that appeared to glow amid the smooth olive tones of her face. “A secret?”

He glanced at her. You want secrets, my dear Cino? I could tell you secrets that would send you stumbling and screaming from the room.

“No… no secrets.” He gestured to the wide-based crystal decanter on the glass coffee table before them. “Just some wine.”

“I don’t really like red wine. Champagne’s my thing. You know that.”

“Of course. Your other lover. Dampierre.”

“Not just Dampierre—Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige.”

“Of course. And only the 1990 vintage.”

“Mais oui. That’s the best.”

Milos wondered if it was truly the taste of her Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige 1990 she preferred or the fact that it was harder to find and twice as expensive as Dom Perignon. If it was price and rarity that turned her on, then she’d go absolutely wild for the Petrus.

“I have something even better here.” He lifted the decanter and held it up to the light. “A very special red wine, a Bordeaux whose grapes were harvested long before you were born. In nineteen forty-seven.”

“Nineteen forty-seven!” she said, laughing. “That’s before my father was born! Is it still any good?”

“It’s marvelous,” Milos said. “I’ve been letting it breathe.”

Actually, he hadn’t tasted it, but anything this expensive had to be good. He hadn’t poured it into the decanter either. Kim had done that.

Kim was further proof of the Milos maxim: you don’t have to know shit—you simply have to hire people who do.

And Kim Soong knew damn near everything—about food, about wine, about clothes, about all sorts of important things. How a gook got to know so much was beyond Milos, but Kim had become indispensable. He had done a little dance when Milos showed him the half-case of Petrus 1947. Milos had figured it had to be pretty good stuff if Monnet had wanted it; Kim’s reaction had confirmed that. Kim really knew red wines.