Frankly, Layla was in awe of her transformation.
And more than a little rueful that she’d missed watching it as it had happened.
The server came to clear their entrée plates—Layla had eaten a truly astounding piece of fish, reminded on her first bite that it was Paris that taught her to genuinely love butter—and Emily raised her eyebrows at her and Rosie in question about dessert, and suddenly, Layla felt soglad.
Yes, she wanted dessert, because it was desserthere, in a city that was basically hallowed ground for desserts, and also because she was having fun, and shockingly didn’t feel like she had to rush back to the hotel to recover from all this, and—
“Oh my god, okay,” said Rosie, slapping her hands down on thetable as soon as the server retreated back into the crowd. “As much as I’ve loved listening to you catch Layla up, Em, we need to move on now.”
A little finger of foreboding tapped on Layla’s shoulder.
“To thisbest manMichael brought along.” She waggled her eyebrows. One, predictably, was pierced.
Layla swallowed, the taste of wine in her mouth turning sour.
The brother’s ex-wife, he’d said. Somehow it felt more like a censure than any single thing Cara had said to her leading up to this trip, all her different versions ofYou don’t have to do this.
When Griffin Testa saidthe brother’s ex-wife, he said it like she was the stupidest person alive.
On the one hand, Layla did not want the topic to turn to Griffin. But on the other, she did not like thinking about him already knowing something about her, and her knowing nothing about him.
Maybe she needed some kind of ammunition to be in the same room with him again.
And when Emily responded to Rosie with an uncharacteristic eye roll, a dismissive hand wave, Layla felt her curiosity pique.
“Emmmmmmmyyyyyyy,” Rosie said pleadingly, jutting her bottom lip out.
Em shrugged again, for the first time tonight looking unsettled. “The truth is, I don’t know much about him. He and Michael grew up together, and he’s very…”
She trailed off, took another drink.
“Very what!” Rosie practically shouted.
Layla loved Rosie, to be honest.
“Very private,” Emily said. “I don’t think he leaves home much. He’s like, a billionaire.”
Rosie slammed her hands on the table again. “WHAT.”
Layla was stuck in staring mode.
“A billionaire?” she finally echoed, her disdain obvious. Being an even moderately aware adult in the twenty-first century had taught Layla that pretty much every billionaire belonged in prison, or at the very least kept in some kind of island confinement with other billionaires, where they could circle-jerk each other all day with their evil, society-destroying ideas.
“Okay, he’s not actually a billionaire,” Em clarified. She paused again while the server returned with more wine, as though she couldn’t say any more until they were alone once more.
Layla flashed back to Griffin’s words on the elevator.
Don’t tell Michael you saw me.
“But he’s wealthy,” Em continued. “Like, big-money wealth.”
The clarification, Layla knew, was speaking. As a MacKenzie, Em had grown up with money—well-to-do grandparents on both sides, the MacKenzie side especially. Jamie’s dad, Robert, ran a successful financial management firm; Manon was a professor at BC. When Layla first met them, they were buying a second home in the Berkshires, having recently come into an inheritance from Robert’s late mother. They regularly talked about having a pied-à-terre here in Paris—Manon’s dream—when they retired.
So if Em was sayingbig moneyabout Griffin Testa, she meant business.
“What’s he do?” Rosie asked, and in the growing fog of her wine-brain, Layla considered options that made sense given her experiences so far of Griffin.
Extremely mean vampire who has amassed money over the course of centuries. Crime boss who sells organs on the dark web. Inventor of nuclear-grade weapons.
