We decamped to the screening room, where I put on a cartoon about fairy princesses and filled her in on what’d happened since we last talked. I omitted the non-kid-friendly parts; there were some things about my life that Pen never needed to know.
“Did Xavier hurt you?” she asked. “Because I told him I’d sic Mary on him if he did.”
“He did briefly, but he didn’t mean it, and he apologized.” I paused, my brow creasing. “Who’s Mary?”
“A haunted Victorian doll.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t have a Victorian doll. They creep you out.”
“I know.” Pen’s grin was pure mischief. “But he doesn’t know that.”
I couldn’t help it; I burst into laughter. She was definitely going to be a handful when she grew up.
Pen made it through the entire movie before her energy flagged. Now that our visits were out in the open, she didn’t protest as much as she usually did when we said goodbye.
I told Rhea to call me in the next few days so we could schedule our next visit, and I waited for them to disappear into Pen’s room before I left.
I made it halfway through the foyer when the front door opened, and I came face-to-face with my other sister.
Georgia and I froze at the same time.
She was impeccably groomed, per usual, but I detected shadows beneath her slightly bloodshot eyes. Her baby bump was finally showing, but that hadn’t stopped her from wearing three-inch heels or blitzing through Madison Avenue; her arms were laden with shopping bags from a dozen designer stores.
“Moving back home into the viper’s nest?” I asked. “How sentimental.”
Georgia sniffed and tossed her hair, but her eyes darted left and right like she’d rather be anywhere else except here. “I’m staying here while our townhouse is getting renovated. The fumes are bad for the baby,” she said, emphasizing the last word like I cared that she was pregnant and I wasn’t.
Bullshit. She was too much of a control freak not to nitpick renovations from as close quarters as possible. But if the townhouse wasn’t getting renovated, then why…
“Is Bentley staying here too?” I asked on a hunch. Georgia’s eye twitched, proving my hunch correct.
I didn’t know what happened after she left my office, but obviously, it was enough for her to move back home for however long. She still wore her wedding ring, but that didn’t mean much. Plenty of people wore their wedding rings long after the love behind them had dissolved.
Instead of feeling triumphant or vindicated by the evidence of their relationship troubles, I felt…nothing. Because, simply put, I didn’t care. Not anymore.
“You might think you did something by playing that audio in your office, but you didn’t,” she said when I brushed past her. “Bentley and I are weathering a few issues at this time, but we’ll never leave each other. I will always be the one he chose over you.” I looked at her, with her perfect hair and expensive clothes and diamond ring, and felt something I never thought I’d feel toward her: pity.
I’d grown up jealous and resentful of Georgia for being our father’s favorite and for playing the perfect daughter and socialite so well when I’d struggled to do the same. She’d always gotten what she wanted, and I’d thought that was something to be envied. It wasn’t until now that I realized my jealousy had been misplaced because Georgia was never happy with what she had; she was only happy when she took things away from other people. She spent her life trying to win invisible competitions with others because it made her feel superior when, in reality, her power plays were the ultimate sign of insecurity.
If I still cared enough about her as a sister, I would try to help her, but I didn’t. That bridge had burned long ago.
“You’re wrong. I did do something,” I said calmly. “I proved your husband is a lying scumbag, though I’d correctly guessed it wouldn’t matter if it took you that long to recognize his faults. If you want to stay with him, stay. If you want to divorce him one day, then do that. There’s no need to tell me because I truly don’t care. But I hope for your unborn baby’s sake that he treats them better than he’s treated anyone else in his life. Otherwise, he’ll learn that children aren’t always as forgiving as wives.”
Georgia sucked in a sharp breath, but I didn’t wait for a response.
I walked out the door and didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 46
Xavier
The next four months passed in a whirlwind of meetings and construction during the day and dates out or dinners in at night.
During that time, Sloane and I fell into an unspoken rhythm of staying at each other’s houses. One week, I’d crash at her apartment; the next, she’d take up residence at my town house. I gave her her own closet so she didn’t have to keep lugging her belongings across town, and she added my favorite brand of espresso to her pantry so I could get my caffeine fix without leaving her place. They were quiet milestones that passed without fanfare, but they kept me going during the most hectic, gray-hair-inducing season of my life. Contractor delays, customs issues, a nearby steam pipe explosion that cut off our access to the vault for a full week—problems abounded throughout the repair and construction process, and that wasn’t counting the massive egos I had to deal with on the marketing side of things.
“The vault is underground,” I told a certain rock star’s second assistant. “It doesn’t have an attached helipad…No, unfortunately, we cannot build one before the opening. Yes, I will make sure we have security in place so he doesn’t get mobbed by fans in the ten feet between his car and the entrance.”
I cast a warning glare at Sloane, who smirked from her spot next to me on the couch. She was handling the RSVPs for the party, but I’d insisted on sharing the guest relations duties because I had personal relationships with a lot of the attendees.
I deeply regretted that decision.
However, construction issues and self-important guests aside, the run-up to the Vault’s opening went mostly according to plan. There were no more fires, thank God, nor were there any major accidents or injuries. The steam pipe explosion cut into our already tight timeline, but my crew pulled through by the skin of their teeth.
The day before my thirtieth birthday, we were still putting finishing tiles in the bathrooms, but…
We got it done. All of it.
The following evening, after dozens of sleepless nights and crushing self-doubts, the Vault officially opened before the clock struck midnight and I turned the big three-oh.
Two hundred and fifty of the city’s wealthiest and most influential filled the renovated space, sipping cocktails next to the original six-inch steel walls and admiring the hundred-year-old brass chandelier.
Every single person had RSVP’d yes. There was Ayana and the fashion crowd, Isabella and the publishing heavyweights, Dominic and the barons of Wall Street, and more. Every major entertainment and society outlet was present for coverage because tonight, more titans of business, politics, celebrity, and art had converged in one place since the last Legacy Ball.
I’d never been so proud.
The night was young, and there were still a hundred things that could go wrong, but the fact that I got this far meant everything.
