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I square my shoulders, grip my clutch, and start striding toward the entrance.

The inside is even more intimidating than the outside. Crystal chandeliers hang from ceilings that seem unbelievably high. Gold-framed paintings line the walls. A string quartet plays on a stage rising up in the back. Everywhere I look, there’s money in its many forms: watches, gowns, red-bottomed shoes, jewels the size of small comets dangling from old ladies’ ears. Just truly obscene displays of wealth.

While I’m gawking, a server appears at my elbow with a silver tray. “Canapé?” he offers.

I grab something without looking. It’s tiny and has what I suspect might be fish eggs on top.

Another server approaches. “Champagne?” I nod and take a glass, just to have something to do with my hands.

“Thanks,” I say to both of them. Neither responds before they’re absorbed back into the amoeba of the crowd. Manners aren’t that important here, I suppose.

I take a sip of my drink and nibble the canapé. Then, mid-bite, I see him.

Lukas is across the room, standing near a marble pillar. He’s wearing a black tuxedo that fits to perfection. His silver hair is swept back from his face. His beard is neatly groomed.

He looks like a movie star. Or, like, the president or something.

He’s talking to someone I don’t recognize, his posture relaxed but commanding. Even from here, I can see people gravitating toward him, orbiting him like planets around the sun.

Then his eyes find mine.

The connection is painfully brief. On a clock, only a few seconds pass. Three, two, maybe not even that. But in my heart, a million things happen.

It clutches first. A tight and painful throb, a grasping around emptiness that longs to be filled.

Then it releases. Warmth flutters through me from head to toe. Ifeellike champagne, fizzling from within. I’m gooey and flushed in the best possible way.

Then it squeezes again, harder this time…

… because he’s already looked away.

He turns back to the man he was speaking with. Says something. The man laughs.

And I’m left feeling cold, cold, cold.

I have fish eggs in my mouth and champagne going flat in my hand. I feel garishly on display in this dress. For a brief second in my apartment, I thought maybe I looked good. But Lukas’s icy rejection from afar has dashed those thoughts to a million little pieces.

I swallow the canapé and chase it with a swig of champagne. Bigger than a swig, actually. More like a gulp. A gulp-and-a-half, if we’re being honest. Might’ve been two. Sue me.

What am I supposed to do now, though? Storm over there and tap him on the shoulder, like, ‘Hey, hello, I’m here’? Stand here like a potted plant until he decides to acknowledge me?

Neither option sounds all that appealing.

A woman in emerald green brushes past me, nearly knocking the glass from my hand. She doesn’t apologize, or, for that matter, notice me at all.

I’m invisible here. A complete nobody. If Lukas wanted to humiliate me, he’s done that. If he wanted me to feel like garbage, gold star. A-plus. Ten out of ten. He’s very, very good at this.

Is it too soon to leave? Even if I did manage to find him, the chauffeur will probably follow Lukas’s lead and pretend like I don’t exist. I could always get an Uber. Fleeing back home tomy sweatpants and a pint of depression-flavored Ben & Jerry’s sounds nice right about now.

But my feet won’t move. I’m trapped by pride or stubbornness or maybe just the four-inch heels that are already killing my arches.

There’s also the thing Jillian and I talked about: uncovering dirt. It was sort of a wild goose chase anyway, a real swing in the dark, but she’d be so disappointed if I gave up this easily.

You have backbone, girl,I can practically hear her saying in my ear.Put it to good use. There’s a dead woman out there who might have a story to tell. Don’t you want to hear it? For her sake? For yours? If nothing else, don’t you wanna stick it to this asshole?

“You came.”

I jump so hard I almost spill what’s left of my second champagne. Kir has materialized at my elbow. Like his father, he looks as if he came here directly from shooting a cologne ad.