“Heh heh! Indeed. But just knowing your watch would survive makes it worth having a Plumper, doesn’t it? Here, I’ll let you try it on.”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

Richie was momentarily distracted by a text message on his phone. “Wow, guess who just arrived? Mehmet Sabançi! That guy’s family basically owns all of Greece.”

“Turkey, actually,” Nick said almost reflexively.

“Oh, you’ve heard of him?”

“He’s one of my best friends.”

Richie looked momentarily shocked. “He is? How in the world do you know him?”

“We were at Stowe together.”

“You guys met at a ski resort?”

“Not Stowe, Vermont. Stowe—it’s a school in England.”

“Oh. I went to Harvard Business School.”

“Yes, you’ve mentioned that a number of times.”

Just then, Mehmet stepped out of the elevator and onto the terrace. Looking down at the late arrival, Richie said excitedly, “Whew—who is that spectacular babe he brought with him?”

Nick glanced down. “My God…I don’t believe it!”

• • •

On the main terrace, Carlton leaned against a railing alongside his Cambridge chum Harry Wentworth-Davies, surveying the scene. “You need to try these foie gras cronuts,” Harry yelled into his ear. “Better than crack cocaine. And I couldn’t believe that bloke on the telly who goes around the world terrorizing other people’s restaurants served it to me.”

“This is how Richie draws his crowd. Heaps of pretentious food and pricey booze,” Carlton said with barely veiled contempt.

“Quite right—this Romanée-Conti isn’t shabby at all,” Harry said, swirling his goblet.

“It’s a bit too obvious for me, but I will help to deplete as much of these reserves as I possibly can,” Carlton said.

“Not sure you want to get too sloshed tonight, mate,” Harry cautioned. “Shouldn’t you be in tip-top condition for the main event later?”

“Quite right. The smart thing to do would be to stop drinking now, wouldn’t it?” Carlton deliberated, before downing another glassful in several quick gulps. He scanned the crowd, recognizing most of Richie’s cronies who had gathered here. It was a wonder Colette didn’t suspect anything. He shouldn’t have come tonight. Being here—seeing everyone trying way too hard to have fun—only made him angrier, and he could feel the blood pounding in his temples. Four hours ago he was in Antwerp, and he wished he’d stayed there, or continued on to Brussels and caught the next flight back to Shanghai. Actually, what he really wanted to do was go to England, but Mr. Tin had advised him not to enter the UK for a few years. How did he ever fuck things up to this extent? To be banned from the one place where he felt like he could truly breathe?

“Colette’s looking rather spectacular,” Harry said to Carlton, eyeing her as she posed for a picture with Rachel by the pyramid of champagne glasses.

“She always does.”

“That girl she’s posing with looks rather like you.”

“That’s my sister,” Carlton replied. Rachel was the reason he had come back today. Part of him resented her for it, but he found himself strangely protective of her at the same time. He just couldn’t ditch her in Paris like that. It had been like this from the moment they met. He was all ready to hate her, this girl who had come out of nowhere and set off an atomic bomb in the midst of his family, but she had turned out to be nothing like what he had expected. She was different from all the other women in his life, and Nick was one of the few guys he could actually stand being around. What was it? he wondered. Was it that Nick had also gone to Stowe? Or was it the way Nick didn’t feel the need to vie for position with Richie like all the other party parasites here tonight?