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“And then?”

“Then I’ll ask her if she’s ever considered leading work more serious than embodiment coaching. Work with real women. Real change. I’ll tell her the retreat would finally give her an opportunity to be around people worthy of her insight.”

I stared at his profile. He didn’t look proud of his accuracy. He looked like he was working.

I moved on to Lark, Vivienne’s protégée. Luxury wellness concierge. Sparkling, hollow, devoted to Vivienne with frantic intensity.

“I’ve watched Vivienne compliment her,” I said. “It works for about ten seconds. She lights up, and then it drains out of her and she’s colder than she was before. Praise is her drug and she’s built a tolerance.”

“Then no praise,” Damian said. “Not at first. I’ll ask her what she’d build if Vivienne weren’t around.”

The sentence punctured me like a thorn.

“And when she answers?”

“I’ll make it clear I’m taking her seriously. I’ll treat everything she says as competence. Then, later, I’ll tell her some women are meant to orbit power, and some are meant to hold it.”

“Fuck, Damian.”

“That one will be easy,” he said quietly.

I flinched and glanced out the window, needing a breath.

I described Sloane Pryor next. Old money, breathwork, public humiliation, the Italian sculptor who had left her for a thirty-year-old Pilates instructor, the whole terrible business of rebuilding in public while everyone pretended not to be watching.

“Dignity,” Damian said immediately.

“That fast?”

“That fast. No sympathy that sounds like everyone else’s satisfaction.” His hands stayed steady on the wheel. “Women like Sloane can survive being undesired, but they can’t survive being pitied.”

“So what do you do?”

“I won’t approach first. I’ll let her notice me. Later, I’ll ask her a question that assumes she’s an authority.”

“A question about what?”

“Art. Houses. Wine. A subject she can answer from above me.”

“From above you?”

“She’ll need that.” His voice was flat. “The man who left her made her feel replaceable. I’ll make her feel exceptional. If I do it right, she’ll think coming to the retreat is discernment instead of desperation.”

That one hurt in a place I hadn’t expected.

Then Karen, the exhausted lawyer, a friend of Sloane. Brilliant, brittle, probably living on coffee and resentment and the muscle memory of being wanted by no one. I knew what I was going to say before I understood why I knew it.

“Don’t be reverent with her,” I said, watching the vineyards slide past. “She spends all day being competent for people who never once wonder what it takes. If you’re too kind, she’ll distrust it.”

Damian thought for a moment. “You know her well?”

“I’ve met her twice,” I said.

“She needs relief, then. A little resistance. I’ll disagree with her once, then let her win. Then I’ll make it clear I liked losing.”

I looked out the windshield. A knot tightened beneath my ribs.

The vineyards were thinning, replaced by road signs and gas stations and the ordinary artifacts of a Sunday morning. People buying coffee and merging badly. People going to grocery stores and yoga classes and brunches where no one was expected to recruit anyone to be wedded to an ancient parasite.