Evalyne Delaire had always been able to control a room.
Boardrooms, gala halls, studios full of designers with scissors between their teeth and deadlines in their eyes. She could walk in, speak once, and watch the temperature change. People straightened. Voices lowered. Decisions happened.
But a phone call from her “friends” could still turn her spine into glass.
She stood at the window of her office, looking down at the late-morning traffic sliding between towers like a slow river of metal, and held her phone at arm’s length as if distance could soften the sound.
“It’s been weeks, Miss Evalyne,” Vivian sang. “We’re not asking for his blood type. Just his name.”
Celine’s voice came in right after, dry and amused. “Unless his name is ‘I made him up,’ in which case we’d like to know tha
