Here’s my moment, and I don’t let it pass me up.

“So you’re friends with Lainey but you don’t invite her to things like this?”

She laughs, and for a split second I think I’ve revealed my entire deck of cards. I was too obvious—it’s clear how curious I am about her.

Then Collette shakes her head, lays her phone down, and looks over at me like I’m crazy. “Absolutely not. The girl is a porcelain doll—you know, a pretty thing you look at but don’t touch. She wouldn’t be caught dead here. She wouldn’t be anywhere outside of the gallery, and she’s not even there all the time, just Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for like four hours. Besides that, she’s kept under lock and key by that old granny of hers. It’s fucking weird, if you ask me. In some ways she still acts like she’s a kid.”

“She’s younger than us…maybe you don’t know her friend group? Maybe she’s too shy to tell you what she gets up to on the weekends.”

She weighs this option before ultimately shaking her head.

“Doubt it. I’ve asked her stuff before, like trying to figure out what she’s into, if she parties or goes out, and it’s clear she has no idea how the world works.” She sees my deep-set frown and tries to ease up a bit, holding out her hand. “I feel bad. Truly, it’s not that strange. Just…she’s nice, but I don’t know…something’s off with her.”

God, my heart breaks hearing that.

Poor Lainey.

I think of how sad that thirteen-year-old girl would be if she realized even when she grows up, people will still misunderstand her and think she’s odd.

I know better though.

And now, I know exactly when and how I’ll be able to see her again thanks to Collette.

Chapter Thirteen

Emmett

I have one hoop to jump through before I can go see Lainey at Morgan Fine Art Gallery this afternoon: a lunch meeting with Papa.

There was no getting around it. He arrived in Boston yesterday and will only be here for one night before he continues his travels down to Florida for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix this weekend. GHV has been a longtime sponsor of the Mercedes team. He enjoys a close friendship with Toto Wolff and never passes up the opportunity to watch the races from Mercedes’ paddock. I wonder what he would say if he knew I was a die-hard Scuderia Ferrari fan.

He’s waiting for me at the restaurant in a private room in the back. Wilson sits beside him, the two of them hard at work. When I enter, they don’t stop on my account.

The bread basket in front of them goes untouched as Wilson relays an email to my father about the mid-month numbers from our Southeast Asia market. We’re keeping careful watch on it because GHV’s fashion group opened twenty new stores there earlier in the year, ten in Singapore alone.

“As we expected, the region’s large population and growing purchasing power present quite a lucrative opportunity for GHV,” Wilson declares. “Revenue in the luxury goods market amounted to $5.1 billion in just the first half of this month.”