Apparently, ‘junior matchmaker’ was another name forbottom bitch.
Emmy walked past the "Success Wall"—Cecelia's pride and joy. Framed black-and-white photos of matched couples, all cheekbones and coastal real estate. Engagement photos on Martha's Vineyard. Wedding shots at the Four Seasons. One couple literally on a yacht.
Everyone looked perfect. That was the common thread. Not happy, necessarily—though they'd clearly studied happiness from a distance and could reproduce it on cue. Just... curated. Like their love lives had been focus-grouped.
She turned down the hallway. Sabine Greer's office occupied the corner with the harbor view—glass walls, leather furniture, a desk that belonged in a magazine no one could afford to subscribe to. Door always closed during consultations, which apparently required soundproofing and two hours minimum.
Sabine looked up as Emmy passed. Their eyes met. Sabine's expression was the emotional equivalent of a read receipt with no response—acknowledgment without engagement. The look of someone who'd already filed Emmy undertemporary.
Emmy lifted her hand in a small wave. Sabine inclined her head a fraction of an inch, then returned to her client.
Emmy sat down at her desk, woke up her laptop, and pulled upKnight, Grant.
She had him. She actually had him.
Grant was officially in the system. Now came the hard part: finding the woman who wouldn't make him want to fake an injury to get out of a date.
Emmy pulled up the profile she'd spent the last forty-eight hours refining.
Name: Juliana Deliberto
Age: 31
Occupation: Art Gallery Director (Newbury Street)
Interests: Marathon training, high-altitude hiking, modern architecture
Emmy clicked through to the "Lifestyle" tab, where she'd pasted notes from Juliana's intake form and her blog,Optimized Living.
4:45 AM: Wake-up, no alarm (circadian rhythm optimization)
4:50 AM: Cold plunge (3 minutes, immune system boost)
5:20 AM: Fasted cardio (5-mile run, Zone 2 heart rate)
6:30 AM: Breakfast (macro-balanced, tracked in three separate apps)
Emmy sat back. She scheduled her bathroom breaks.
Like a psychopath.
But there was something else in the intake—a paragraph Emmy had almost skimmed past. Juliana had written about discovering a Rothko at the Tate Modern when she was nineteen.
I stood there for forty minutes and cried. I didn't know why. I still don't. That's what art should do—bypass the part of you that needs to understand.
A woman who could cry in front of a painting for forty minutes and then go home and track her macros in three separate apps—that wasn't a contradiction. That was someone with range.
It was logical. It was efficient. It was exactly what Cecelia wanted. And you kind of needed to be a psycho to date a celebrity, right?
"Sabine just signed the youngest partner at Bain Capital."
Emmy's soul briefly left her body. Cecelia Ferrance was standing in the doorway, having apparently materialized from the shadow dimension where apex predators waited for their prey to relax.
"Good morning, Cecelia," Emmy said, straightening her spine. "That's great for Sabine."
"She's consistent," Cecelia said, her eyes scanning Emmy's tiny desk as if looking for dust. "Sabine closed four high-profile matches last quarter. A tech CEO and a surgeon. A state senator and a museum curator. Do you know what those matches have in common?"
Emmy's stomach tightened. "They're all successful?"
