But it bores me. The whole scene bores me. I’m nineteen years old, and being around the fashion crowd is the last thing I need. Bunch of vapid users is what they are.
“Blaise,” Pascal says to me as I approach the front doors to my family home, tightening the mask around my head as I go. “Not so fashionably late,” he remarks.
I haven’t seen my brother for five months. For a moment I wonder if that warrants a hug or the shake of a hand, but then I remember what side of the Dumont family I’m on.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to come,” I tell Pascal, stopping in front of him. “Do I need an invitation?”
He smirks, and I know by that smirk that he wishes he could keep me out of the party. I’ve always been a third wheel, one reason why I’ve been rolling along on my own way. “I’ll make an exception for you.” He looks around my shoulder as if he’s expecting someone else. “No date? Again?”
I shrug. “Can’t help it if I’m picky.”
“Picky with men or picky with women?” He’s grinning again. He’s always teased me for not having a girlfriend, and honestly, I like to play up the fact that he thinks I could be gay.
“Let’s just say I don’t waste my time with people who are beneath me,” I say, brushing past him.
“Very noncommittal,” he calls after me as I step into the house, but I don’t acknowledge that I hear him. I barely do, anyway—the place is absolutely roaring with laughter and music and the sound of chatter and champagne glasses clinking.
The good thing about being fashionably late is that it’s easier to blend into the crowd and everyone is well lubricated. My father will probably be too sauced to want to spend much time talking to me. I just need for him to see me, need to strike a few poses for the tabloids, and then be out of here.
But for the life of me, I can’t seem to find my father, not right away. I do have a few giggling models coming up to me, asking how I am, teasing me for having no date, doing their best to get under my skin. Other than that, I don’t see any of my family.
Until . . .
I have to do a double take. I’m walking past the dining room, which has been cleared out to make room for guests, and heading to the back doors where the party has spilled out into the yard, when I see a familiar face.
Seraphine.
But familiar is a vague term. I haven’t seen her in nearly two years—she wasn’t at last year’s ball—and she’s like an elevated version of the younger cousin that I knew.
Yeah, cousin, I remind myself. Your sixteen-year-old cousin.
This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to remind myself of who Seraphine is to me. Memories of being in Tuscany come flooding back as I stand here and stare at her. I kissed her in that fucking chicken coop. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I can tell you I thought about it for a long time after.
Thoughts I never should have had.
Thoughts no one should probably have about their cousin.
I’m frozen in place. She hasn’t spotted me yet because she’s hanging off the arm of some guy in a yellow mask. He’s tall, though not as tall as me, with a strong jaw. I immediately hate him. I’m no stranger to jealousy, and I don’t try to bat it away. I already know she’s too good for him.
I mean, she doesn’t look sixteen, that’s for sure. Maybe my age, maybe even older. Her height helps. Her hair is up, exposing her long neck. She’s filled in a lot, and even though her limbs are still long, she has hips now and an ample amount of cleavage, both of which are accentuated by her yellow, curve-hugging dress.
I hate the fact that she matches the guy she’s with, the yellow making him look sallow and jaundiced while making her darker skin glow. I also hate that she won’t stop staring at him adoringly beneath her own mask and that his own eyes are roving all over the party.
Until they meet mine.
I stare right back, waiting.
Finally Seraphine tears her eyes off him and follows his gaze.
I can’t tell if she’s surprised or not, but she does mouth something to the guy, perhaps reassuring him that I’m not a threat, even though I feel like I am. She at least tells him that I’m her cousin, which immediately makes him stand up straighter.
He walks away from her, right across the crowd in the hall and over to me.
“Are you Blaise Dumont?” the guy asks, his accent German, or perhaps Austrian. He sounds refined or at least like he’s trying to be.
“It depends who is asking,” I tell him.
Seraphine comes up beside him. “Blaise, this is my . . . friend Emil.”
I stare at her, brows raised. “No ‘hello, dear cousin’? I haven’t seen you in over a year. Just, this is your friend Emil.”
Her eyes narrow beneath her mask, and I know I’ve struck a nerve. Ever since I kissed her, things have been kind of strained. I’ve acted like nothing happened, but I feel like that just pisses her off. But what does she want me to do? Act on it again? She made it more than clear that I was out of line. And perhaps I was. But what can I say, being out of line runs in my blood.
My eyes linger, just for a moment, on her chest and the low-cut lines of her dress, and I feel a painful thrill run through me. The kind of thrill that’s rife with taboo and flirts with danger. The kind of thrill that I have never felt around any other woman before (or, for Pascal’s sake, any other man).
“Yes, of course,” Seraphine says with a sigh. She straightens up, raising her chin. “Hello, dear cousin. I haven’t seen you for over a year, and this is my friend Emil.”
Emil smiles at me. His teeth are way too straight. “I am such a big fan.”
I frown. “A fan? Of what?”
“Of you. Of your label. I’ve wanted to work in fashion for years. I already design my own clothes. This suit, I made it. I grew up in Vienna, helping my father become a tailor, but I’m already far better than he is, and he’s been doing it all his life.”
I eye Seraphine, and I can tell she’s trying not to look embarrassed. What a charmer, my look says.
“Oh, well, I have nothing to do with any of this bullshit,” I say, waving at the crowd of idiots. In other words, I’m guessing you’re just using Seraphine to try to get ahead.
Emil starts laughing, the kind of laugh I’ve heard my mother use. It’s fake and it’s loud and it’s entirely for my benefit. “You’re hilarious. I had no idea.”
He looks at me with an odd glint in his eyes, something almost heated, and I realize that Seraphine was his stepping-stone to me, and then I’m his stepping-stone into the business.
Times like this, I really do wish I’d nipped those rumors in the bud.
I glance again at Seraphine, feeling sorry for her. She really seems to like this guy, as far as I can tell, and yet he’s using her, just as everyone at this party is using everyone else.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” I tell them, “I have alcohol to drink and people to ignore.”
I hear him laugh as I continue toward the backyard, but I get as far as the shorn grass of the lawn before someone grabs my arm.
I turn, not surprised to see Seraphine. Emil is somewhere in the background, perhaps looking for another Dumont ass to kiss.
“I need to ask you a favor,” she says, eyes darting around. She shouldn’t lower her voice like that—it’s almost sexy.
“What?” I ask her, feigning disinterest and leaning back a little, away from her grasp. It would do me no good to stand any closer to her.
“Emil means a lot to me,” she says, and I roll my eyes under my mask. She doesn’t seem to notice. “If you could do anything—”
“Me?” I ask. “You’re not very observant, are you? Too busy putting out to pay any attention.”
Her eyes widen beneath the mask, her mouth dropping. She gasps. “What?”
“I’ve been in Bali for the last few months, in Thailand and Sri Lanka before that. Do I look like someone who gives a fuck about this business?”
She’s speechless and I ex
pect her to go off on me about how I basically called her a whore, but she just shakes her head. “I haven’t known where you’ve been, and it doesn’t matter. Your father looks to you and Pascal as basically his employees.”
I bristle. “That’s Pascal. I’m nothing to my father.”
“But you’re here, aren’t you?” she says smartly, crossing her arms.
I take in a deep breath through my nose. “You have more to do with this business than I do.”
“I’m still in high school,” she says. “My father doesn’t tell me anything, and he doesn’t listen.”
“Ah, so there’s trouble in paradise, is there? Your father isn’t the saint he’s made out to be.”
“No one is who they’re made out to be.”
“Unless you show people they’re right. And anyway, go ask your brother.”
“Olivier wants nothing to do with the business. He did at one point, but now he just wants to open hotels. And Renaud just cares about wine. You’re all I’ve got.”
“You’ve got me as much as you’ve got Pascal, so you might as well go try him.”
She closes her eyes and sighs, shoulders slumping for a moment. Pascal is always the last resort.
“Listen,” I tell her, feeling just a bit bad. “This guy, Emil? He’s not worth it. He’s just using you.”
She straightens up, like her spine was snapped back into place, and glares at me. “You’re an asshole.”
I raise my palms. “Whoa. Asshole? For telling you the truth?”
“You’re just an asshole in general. I should have known you would have never helped me.”
She turns around but before she can go, I reach out and grab her wrist tightly, holding her in place. “Believe it or not, I am trying to help. You should only do favors for people who deserve it.”
“So then do this favor for me,” she says, yanking her wrist away.
“No way. He’s not worthy of it. Find someone worthy and then we’ll talk.”
She swallows hard, and I swear I see the shine of tears in her eyes. “He’s worthy,” she says quietly.
“Oh yeah? How long have you known him?”
“We’ve been dating for eight months. His father is good friends with my father. He’s rich and accomplished and twenty years old. He’s going places.”
“Have you slept with him yet?”
I know it’s in bad form to ask that, but fuck it. I’m curious.
She flinches. “None of your damn business.” And maybe if she wasn’t wearing a mask, I could read her a little better. Or maybe I could never read her at all.
I shrug. Whatever. “Just saying you seem to have it bad.”
For a moment her chin trembles with vulnerability, but then she pulls it together. “I wouldn’t trust your judgment on other people’s relationships. I haven’t seen you in one yet.”
I cross my arms and study her. “You know, everyone seems so fascinated as to whether I’m dating or not; I’m surprised you’re no different. I’m surprised you care.”
“I don’t care,” she says haughtily. “I just notice, since Pascal and Olivier and Renaud—”
“Yes, they’re all running around and fucking everything that walks. Don’t you think it’s possible to do the same and be discreet about it? Perhaps I don’t have a girlfriend in the public eye, but I’m game for laying each and every one of my sexual conquests out for you in detail, if that’s what you’d like.”
“No thank you,” she says.
“You sure? You seem awfully intrigued. And if you’re fucking Emil, I wouldn’t blame you one bit.”
“You’re disgusting,” she says, nearly spitting on me. “Forget I ever talked to you.”
And with that she turns on her heel and storms back inside.
Seraphine has always been a pistol, but now she’s turned into a real firecracker. And it seems whatever I do or say nearly sets her off, though perhaps I deserve it a bit.
Okay, that’s over now. Let’s find Father and get out of here.
I try to shake Seraphine out of my head. We barely spoke and she’s already thrown me for a loop.
I saunter off into the crowd that’s outside, and after running into more models and celebrities and photographers and designers, I finally find my father talking to my uncle. As usual, Ludovic lights up when he sees me and pulls me into a hug, all while I’m watching my father closely, to see if the affection his own brother shows me bothers him.
I think it does. Just a bit. But not enough to become affectionate himself. Not enough to change.
“You decided to show up,” my father says dryly, giving me nothing more than a nod and the slight upturn of his nose, as if the smell of me displeases him.
I shrug. “Figured the party might need a little excitement.”
“We’re glad you’re here,” Ludovic says, that familiar and friendly glint in his eye. “It’s been too long, Blaise. It really has. Where have you been, anyway?”
“Galivanting around Southeast Asia,” my father says. “Wasting his life away.”
I stiffen at that but quickly brush it off. As if working for him is anything but a waste.
“Oh, come now, brother,” my uncle says to him. “When we were his age, we wanted nothing more than to see the world.”
“You saw the world,” my father says, pointing his glass of champagne at him.
“Through the business. Through work. But to be young and free like Blaise . . .” My uncle trails off, and my father is glaring at him to shut up.
The funny thing is that it’s true that my uncle was the one seeing the world for work when he was my age. He joined the company, working right beside my grandfather, and, as far as I understand it, never really took a break. Work is everything to him.
My father, on the other hand, was slow to join. I don’t really know what he did when he was my age. He doesn’t speak about it often, just says he tried university for a bit and then hung around Paris and New York. Eventually he was brought on board at the label, but he never had any kind of passion or enthusiasm for it the way that Ludovic did.
The only thing he really cared about was money and trying to outdo his brother in whatever way he could.
“Blaise isn’t free,” my father says simply. “He may think he is, but he’s a Dumont and we all know that the word translates to chains.” He stares at me as he says this, as if daring me to prove him wrong.
Which I take as my moment to leave this hellhole.
I give my uncle a polite nod to signal that I’m getting the fuck out of here, give nothing to my father, and then head back inside, ready to find my driver.
And that’s when I see it: two things happening at once, a collision course in front of my eyes.
Just outside the back doors that are opened wide to the lawn and reveling partygoers, I see the yellow mask of Emil in a passionate, albeit sloppy, kiss with someone who isn’t Seraphine. I can just see the back of her head and her long blonde hair and his hands running under her dress. So fucking brazen and bold—this kind of public shit is something Pascal would do.
Then I watch as Seraphine steps out and sees Emil kissing this girl. The mask can’t hide her expression as it turns from shock to humiliation to anger.
“What the fuck, Emil!” Seraphine yells, and it’s like the music almost stops as she says that. Everyone turns to look.
The blonde breaks away from him and looks around sheepishly as Seraphine continues to yell. “Who is this? How could you do this to me, in front of everyone!”
My cousin is awfully good at making a scene.
Part of me wants to chuckle and watch in amusement as all the drama explodes in front of my eyes.
But the other part of me actually feels for Seraphine, a feeling that is so peculiar because I don’t normally feel anything. And yet there it is, stabbing me in the chest. The hurt in her eyes, the humiliation flushing on her face, her trembling hands as she rips off her mask and then lunges forward to rip the mask off the blonde.
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“Who are you?” she screeches, trying to pull it off.
The blonde pushes her back. “Get the fuck away from me!”
The mask snaps and reveals her face, but it’s no one that I know.
The look on Seraphine’s face tells me it’s someone she knows.
It spurs her on to push the girl, who stumbles back into Emil.
I know I have to intervene before Seraphine does something stupid. Emil is already trying to distance himself from it, as if he can just slink away.
I stride over and grab Seraphine’s arm, pulling her away from a fight that’s about to get ugly.
“Let go of me!” she hisses, but I don’t. I just tighten my grip and put my arm around her waist, pulling her back until we’re enough at a distance; then I take her by the wrist and lead her around the corner of the house, away from prying eyes.
I expect her to yell at me some more, but once she sees that no one is around, she immediately bursts into tears, putting her face in her hands.
I don’t know what to do. I want to console her, but I feel like that will make it worse. So I keep my distance and watch her cry.
After a few minutes she looks up at me, her makeup running over her full cheeks, her eyes shimmering with sadness and regret, and says, “You were right. Are you happy now?”
I swallow thickly. “I’m not happy,” I tell her, my voice low. “I don’t think I ever am.”
“About Emil!” she cries out. “You knew he would do this to me.”
I nod. “At some point, yes. But not here in front of you. I didn’t think he would do that.”
“He broke my heart!”
And if I had a heart at all, I think mine would break a little for her too.
“I stand by what I said,” I tell her, taking a step closer. “You’re too good for him.”
She shakes her head, tears continuing to spill. “No, no. He did this because I’m not good enough. Because I’m ugly. I’m dark skinned. I’m foreign. I don’t belong. He thought all those things to begin with, and then he used me. He used me to get what he wanted.” She pauses, letting out a shaking sob. “God, I feel so stupid. I feel like Jamillah.”
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