Stella almost broke character by laughing at everyone’s faces. Luna’s jaw had landed somewhere near her plate. Alex’s face had the precise cadence of Sure. Okay. Nicole looked concerned, per usual, and Francis looked like he was two blinks away from a migraine.

Only Harlow seemed to get the joke. It took her a second too long to cover the beginnings of a smile with her fist.

Stella continued, “Can you imagine the power couple we’d become? Me with my brains. Her with her money and connections.”

Luna recovered first. “Jewel’s really smart too.”

“Her with her money and connections,” Stella repeated. “We’d be unstoppable.”

“That’s not nice,” Luna said, grinning. “You shouldn’t talk about your future wife like that.”

“Although I genuinely appreciate your enthusiasm and support, it’s way too early to be thinking about marriage,” Stella said. “And I wasn’t insulting her. I’m just saying we bring different skill sets to our future relationship and that’s mine. She may be ‘smart’”—Stella put air quotes around the word—“I mean she planned all this, so obviously she has vision and the resources to pull it off, but she isn’t ‘smarter’ than me.”

Francis said, “It’s sad that you actually believe that. You don’t know her. You’d be ‘smart’ to stop thinking you do.”

“What’s sad is my obsessive and uncontrollable desire to prove that I’m the most intellectually dominant person in a room at any given time. And full offense? I haven’t had to work very hard here.” Her words were for Francis, and she didn’t care how they sounded to the others, but then her gaze rolled to Luna. “But I am watching you.”

Luna sat up a little straighter, a little prouder. “Since she’s not here, does that Addendum still apply? Or can we talk about the game?”

“Still applies,” Francis said.

“Fine,” Stella said to him. “Did you know that the other Golden Follows hadn’t been subjected to The Jewel of Cruelty? We watched some home movies about the other Golden Weekends while we were away, and they had a normal, non-puzzle-based grand time.”

“Yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “I thought you all did. I told you this was the first time. Twice.”

“See, you keep doing that, though,” Stella said. “The way you present the information, it’s like you’re intentionally trying to mislead us. It’s quite suspicious.”

Francis couldn’t even be bothered to stop looking out the window next to him. “What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing yet. But I am wondering about what else do you just happen to know.”

“Believe what you want. It’s like I said, I’m in this—same as all of you,” Francis said. “Now, stop talking about the game.”

SATURDAY, 9:30 A.M.