I dropped onto the chaise at the foot of my bed, pulled my laptop onto my knees, and opened my banking app. Not because I was worried, but because I liked the reassurance. The numbers hadn’t moved much since last night. My trust fund sat untouched, still bloated and bored. The income column from brand deals looked healthy. I moved a few grand into a new savings folder I labeled St. Moritz – Winter Content and sat back with a sigh.
I hadn’t been to St. Moritz since I was seventeen, the year Addison Duvall invited me to her family’s chalet and we got drunk on champagne stolen from a cellar we weren’t supposed to find. Addison had married some oil heir and gone full ghost after the wedding, but I still thought of her every time I saw the word après. Maybe I’d go back this December. Take a photographer. Wear that shearling coat I’d only worn once.
Or maybe I’d book Tulum. Or the Maldives again, but solo this time.
Maybe that was the problem. Too many maybes. Too many places. Too many versions of me scattered across continents and curated grids.
I didn’t know what I wanted. Only what looked good wanting. And that was always the hardest thing to filter.
Dinner was early—five o’clock sharp, like we were trying to beat the rush at a country club we owned. Quentin served roasted sea bass with fingerling potatoes and a citrus-herb dressing I didn’t ask for but knew better than to critique. Daddy poured himself a second glass of something French and expensive. Momma took one bite of salad and declared it “charming.”
We ate in the sunroom because the dining room was being “re-staged for fall”—meaning the decorator had decided wicker was out, velvet was in, and half the chairs were somewhere between reupholstery and purgatory.
The conversation was civil in that tight, airless way it always was. Polite tension with matching linen napkins.
Daddy asked about my follower growth. Momma asked if I’d spoken to the Maddox twins lately—meaning, was I dating anyone they could casually mention at brunch. I said no. She said “pity.” Daddy checked his Rolex. I finished my fish quietly.
At one point, Daddy said, “Don’t forget to be gracious tonight.”
I said, “I’ll try not to trip over anyone's tax bracket.”
He chuckled. Momma didn’t.
By six-thirty, I was back upstairs, standing in front of my closet in a towel, hair wrapped like a crown of surrender, skin already misted with rosewater and silent judgment. I’d brushed and flossed my teeth twice—couldn’t very well seduce a man with sea bass breath.
The red dress waited like a dare.
I slid it on slowly, letting the satin cling to my hips and fall into place like it had missed me. The slit hit higher than it should have. The neckline was aggressive. The sleeves were sheer enough to piss off Momma and just structured enough to appease her.
I paired it with diamond studs, a vintage clutch, and a mask made of delicate lace and tiny black beads that caught the light when I moved. It had arrived that morning from a boutique in Milan—overnight delivery, no questions asked. I’m not even sure who ordered it.
By the time I finished my makeup—smoky eyes, blood-red lips, cheekbones that could wound—I was supposed to be on the road. The invitation said seven.
I glanced at the time. Seven-oh-eight.
Perfect.
Anyone who mattered arrived fashionably late.
Anyone truly important didn’t arrive on time for anything at all.
I was Sloane Carrington. I didn’t need to be on time. I needed to be unforgettable.
6
CHARLIE
Ispent the day dodging my own reflection, wandering Charleston’s fringes like a man with nowhere to be. The hangar was waiting, that Cessna’s elevator hinge still misaligned, but I couldn’t muster the give-a-damn to go back. It wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I—not today.
I kept my phone close, checking it every half hour, praying Marcus would call with a reprieve.
“Forget the ball, little brother,” he’d say, his voice crackling with that smug grin I’d grown up hating and loving. “I got this.”
But the screen stayed blank, mocking me with its silence.
So I drifted, nursing a coffee in a diner that smelled like burnt toast and regret, then a beer in a dive bar where the jukebox coughed up Johnny Cash like it was doing me a favor. I told myself I was biding my time, strategizing, but I was just procrastinating, putting off the inevitable.
I avoided Dominion Hall as long as I could. My suite was a trap, that tux and mask lying in wait like a noose tailored to my measurements. The mask was a nice touch, though—dark olive drab green, a nod to the years we Dane brothers spent crawlingthrough mud and blood in the service. His idea of a joke, no doubt, but it hit me harder than I wanted to admit.
