Sophia didn’t sleep.
Not properly.
She lay in the penthouse bedroom with the city lights bleeding through the curtains and stared at the ceiling and told herself it was the time difference.
It wasn’t the time difference.
Elena found her in the kitchen at five forty-seven in the morning, already dressed, already on her second coffee and looking at nothing in particular through the floor-to-ceiling window at Central Park below.
She didn’t say anything.
She took a mug from the cabinet, poured herself coffee, and stood beside Sophia.
They watched the park together in the dark.
“How bad was it,” Elena said finally.
“It was fine.”
“Sophia.”
“It was manageable.” Sophia wrapped both hands around her mug.
“He didn’t recognise me immediately. When he did, I walked away before he could recover.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
Elena was quiet for a moment.
“And how are you?”
Sophia looked at the park.
A lone jogger was moving along the path below, small against the dark treeline.
“I’m exactly where I planned to be,” she said.
Diana accepted that.
She knew better than to push at five forty-seven in the morning.
***
Aurora woke at seven.
They heard her before they saw her — small feet on the hallway floor, then the kitchen door pushing open, then her voice, still thick with sleep.
“Maman. Why are you awake already.”
“I’m always awake early.”
“Not this early.” She climbed onto the stool beside Sophia and leaned against her arm.
Her hair was everywhere.
She smelled of the lavender shampoo Elena had bought at the airport.
Sophia pressed her lips to the top of her daughter’s head and held them there for a moment.
“Did something happen?” Aurora asked.
“Nothing happened,” Sophia said.
“I just missed you last night.”
Aurora considered this seriously.
“I missed you too. Auntie Elena let me watch two episodes.”
“Did she.”
“She said you wouldn’t mind.”
“She was probably right.”
Aurora tilted her head up to look at her mother.
She had Sophia’s dark hair and her mouth but the rest of her — the eyes, the particular stillness when she was thinking — was something Sophia had spent five years learning to look at without flinching.
She had mostly learned.
“Are we going to the park today?” Aurora asked.
“If you want.”
“I want.” She slid off the stool.
“I’m going to get dressed. Don’t leave without me.”
“I won’t.”
She disappeared down the hallway.
Sophia listened to the sound of small feet and then the closing of a door and then the silence after.
Elena was watching her.
“Don’t,” Sophia said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Elena turned back to her coffee.
“He’s going to find out eventually.”
“I know.”
“And when he does—”
“I know.” Sophia’s voice was quiet.
Final.
“I’ve known for five years. I planned for it.” She set her mug down.
“I just need more time.”
***
The phone started at eight.
Sasha first — three messages already, each one more urgent than the last.
Not just PageSix now.
Three major outlets, two fashion accounts with serious followings, one blurry video from inside the ballroom that had already collected four hundred thousand views.
In the video Sophia was walking away from the terrace.
You couldn’t see who she had been walking away from.
But she knew.
And somewhere across this city, in whatever building Andrew Blackwood woke up in every morning, he knew too.
Sasha’s final message read: *Blackwood Enterprises PR reached out this morning.
They want a comment from Lumière about your attendance last night.
I told them we don’t comment.
Let me know if that changes.*
Sophia read it twice.
Then she typed back: *It doesn’t change.
Don’t respond to them again.*
She put the phone face down on the counter.
Elena was watching her over the rim of her mug.
“Blackwood Enterprises is already called Sasha,” Sophia said.
“That was fast.”
“Yes.” Sophia picked up her coffee and looked out at the park.
The jogger from earlier was gone.
The sky was getting lighter now, grey turning pale at the edges.
“It was.”
He had moved fast.
That meant last night had shaken him more than he had shown on that terrace.
Good.
She needed him shaken.
She needed him uncertain and off-balance and reaching.
Because a man who was reaching made mistakes and she had not come back to New York to give him the advantage.
She had come back to collect.
Aurora’s voice floated down the hallway, singing something softly to herself as she dressed.
Sophia listened to it and steadied herself against it and looked at the city and waited for the day to begin.