But she stopped.
"Beckanne."
Beckanne pulled off her headset. "Ms. Woodhouse."
Ms. Woodhouse. Not Emmy. Three months and they'd never crossed that line—Beckanne kept her professional distance the way a theater usher keeps the audience from the stage. She saw everything. She participated in nothing.
"Sabine's desk is empty," Emmy said. "On the biggest day in Elite Connections history, she's not here."
Beckanne's expression didn't change, but her hands went still on the keyboard. The way a cat goes still when it spots something to toy with.
"Ms. Greer is on personal leave," Beckanne said. Carefully neutral. The voice of someone who'd been trained to give nothing away but was absolutely dying to.
"Personal leave." Emmy repeated it. Turned the phrase over. "During this."
Beckanne glanced toward Cecelia's closed office door. Then back at Emmy. She was doing the math—discretion versus the sheer pleasure of telling someone.
"I really shouldn't?—"
"I just quit, Beckanne. I don't work here anymore. Whatever you tell me can't get either of us in trouble."
Beckanne's professional mask didn't drop—it tilted, just enough to let the gossip through.
"She's in New York." Beckanne's voice fell to a murmur. "She and Mr. Duke flew out Friday morning.Together." She let that land. "Together-together."
Emmy's hand found the edge of the reception desk. She wasn't devastated. She wasn't even particularly shocked. It was closer to the feeling of finally finding your keys in the pocket you'd already checked twice—obvious, stupid, there the whole time.
"Sabine and Tyce."
"Since at least the golf tournament. Maybe longer." Beckanne was leaning forward now, the headset abandoned, her voiceconspirators-quiet. "Margot in client services saw them at a restaurant in the South End back in September—she thought it was a client meeting, but she said the body language was..." Beckanne searched for the diplomatic word. "Unambiguous."
September. Before the golf tournament. Before Tyce had handed Emmy a driver and told her not to be boring. Before he'd called her beautiful and babe and sent flowers wrapped in condescension. Before he'd ground against other women at the auction while Sabine watched from the bar with champagne and fury and a plan Emmy had been too blind to see.
I've got my eye on someone already.
Emmy had filed that underflirtation directed at me, because of course she had. And hadn’t Ryan told Harper that Tyce had been hanging around? It hadn’t seemed important at the time.
"What are they doing in New York?" Emmy asked. She noted this the way you note the weather—a fact about the world, observable from a distance.
"New satellite office." Beckanne was fully committed now. "Sabine is heading it up. Mr. Duke is bringing his network—tennis connections,ultra-high-net-worth clients. Cecelia announced it internally yesterday morning." She paused. "After Sabine's success at the auction."
The day after.
Not before. After. After Sabine had steered Petra from Boston After Dark straight to Emmy's guilt-stricken face and let the reporter do the math. After the leak had generated two hundred and fourteen new client inquiries and a call from Good Morning America. After Sabine had proven, in the most efficient way possible, exactly what she was willing to do for the firm.
And Cecelia hadrewardedher for it.
It clicked. All of it, all at once.
Sabine hadn't sabotaged Emmy out of jealousy. Sabine had used her.
Emmy was Tyce's matchmaker. On paper, Emmy was the one managing his search. Which meant that as long as Emmy was visibly working with Tyce—meetings, texts, the auction—nobody would look twice at Sabine. Emmy was the red herring. The girl Tyce flirted with publicly so nobody asked who he was sleeping with privately.
It was against company policy to date clients. Sabine knew that better than anyone—six years at Elite Connections, six years watching Cecelia enforce it without mercy. If Sabine's relationship with Tyce had come out while he was an active client, the New York office would have gone to someone else. Her career would have been over. She needed cover. She needed someone else holding Tyce's file, someone Tyce could flirt with at events, someone visible enough to keep the attention off the senior matchmaker in the background.
She needed Emmy.
And when Emmy had served her purpose—when the New York deal was close enough to lock down—Sabine had tipped Petra off at the auction. Not to destroy Emmy. To create enough chaos that nobody would notice Sabine and Tyce slipping out the back door together. Emmy's humiliation was just the exit strategy.
