“Not a ten-thousand-dollar suit.”
“I have other suits.”
“Less expensive ones?”
“Define less expensive.”
She laughed, and for a moment everything else faded: Lilith’s machinations, Peterson Holdings, the retreat, all of it. Just this. Just them.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “Seven o’clock. Feng’s Kitchen on Northern Boulevard.”
“I’ll be there.” He headed for the door, then paused. “The dresses… you look stunning in them.”
“I thought you said dangerous.”
“That was implied.” His gaze held hers. “Wear the blue to the gala. I want everyone to see what I saw today.”
Then he was gone.
Ava stood alone with her shopping bags, the wordboyfriendstill echoing in the text she’d sent.
Three days until the retreat.
Two weeks since she’d started at the firm.
One dinner with her parents that might finally make this real.
The pendant hummed faintly against her skin, a low thrum like a tuning fork struck and held.
She was ready to find out which way it would go.
CHAPTER 8
The last time Ava brought someone home to meet her parents, she’d been twenty-two and convinced she was in love with a philosophy major named Brad who insisted Sartre could only be understood while high.
That dinner ended with her mother asking if Brad had suffered a head injury as a child.
This would be worse.
“Stop fidgeting,” Victor said from the driver’s seat as they cruised through Queens. He’d traded his usual charcoal suit for something softer: navy blue, no tie, the top button of his white shirt undone. It should have made him look more approachable. Instead, it just made him look like a model pretending to be casual.
The September evening painted everything gold, but Ava barely noticed. She smoothed her dress for the twentieth time. She’d changed outfits three times before Victor had physically removed her from her closet, declaring the simple blue dress “adequate for meeting parents who already know you’re coming.”
“I’m not fidgeting.”
“You’ve adjusted that same spot forty-three times since we left Manhattan.”
“You’re counting?”
“I count everything about you.” The admission came out quiet. Unexpected. He cleared his throat, eyes fixed on the road. “Your parents are lovely, I’m sure.”
She turned to stare at him. Victor Morningstar, ancient demon and senior partner, looked genuinely nervous. A muscle twitched near his jaw.
“They’re going to ask about grandchildren,” she warned. “My mother’s been planning my wedding since I was five. She has a Pinterest board.”
“How thorough can a Pinterest board be?”
“Three thousand pins organized by season, color scheme, and lunar phase.”
