Next time, I’ll talk your ear off about it.
HELENA WARRICK
And Ancient Greece and your next hit song. Don’t disappoint me, Houdini ♥
I think I had a hernia. There were like six hundred reasons she wouldn’t be flirting with me even if she were gay. But that was a little flirty.
We’d apparently skipped Cass and had moved straight to Houdini as my nickname, which was mortifying how much I was starting to like it. I was such a fucking dumbass.
JULIE
And you still owe me something embarrassing! Don’t you disappoint me either.
Goodnight, Tribeca.
HELENA WARRICK
Goodnight, Queens.
Yeah. Goodnight, Queens.
I took off my makeup, fumbled my way through a skincare routine that had more steps than I was using to doing literal steps in a day, and I sank onto a grimy, stiff mattress on the floor to sleep.
Chapter 8
Helena
“A party?” Linyue exploded at me, her face red. Her tiny little glasses slid down her nose, and it would have been comical if I didn’t feel like I was getting pulled apart from every direction. “You take Cheng Shiyi and run off out of Manhattan to a party with him and you don’t even tell anyone?”
My apartment, normally a safe refuge, was suddenly just walls closing me in with her. I was too grown-up now to be this scared of someone like Linyue yelling at me. “He had a good time,” I protested weakly.
“He had a good time! Well, then that just makes it all okay, doesn’t it?” She marched in through the door, inviting herself into my apartment, and I wished I had the temerity to stand in her way and shut the door. Instead, I stepped aside and stood rigidly by the door as it swung shut behind her, and I watched as she paced across the room, a hand to her forehead, and sat at the kitchen table, turning to face me. “What I think you don’t understand,” she said, “is that this is very, very expensive business. Cheng Shiyi could have financed an entire apartment tower in Shanghai. Instead, he came to look into ShiyunAmerica, even during a downturn. That is more than just dollars and yuan, Ms. Warrick. That is reputation, and reputation is valuable.”
I corralled all the defiance in my body to say, “Is he pulling out of anything because of this?”
“Business is carefully coordinated.” She waved her phone at me and dropped it on the table. “Do you think I manage these schedules for nothing? We aren’t here to entertain Cheng. We’re trying to guide him along a carefully constructed path that would lead him to investing. Every step of the way was planned out before he even booked a flight. He was not on American soil for one hour before the plan was useless, because now he’s more interested in playing at parties with models.”
My face burned, and I squeezed my hands tightly. I refused to back down and be small, but I was so crumpled up already that I didn’t have anything I could say, so I just stood there like a statue. She shook her head, adjusting her glasses with a frustrated sigh.
“Why did you not tell anybody?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal.” That was a lie. I knew it was going to go exactly like this.
“You have never done anything like this before.”
“I… I know, but…”
“Is it Ms. Fong? Did she tell you to do this?”
My throat tightened. “It was my idea,” I lied. She stood up slowly.
“In that case, I think we will have to keep a closer eye on you,” she said. “You are a representative of the brand, whether you like it or not. And I think you do not understand that. We will make sure you do not have any further dealings with Mr. Cheng so as not to derail the plan any further, and you will be focusingvery intentlyon your reputation.”
“But—” I wrapped my arms defensively around myself, feeling smaller by the second. My voice came out pitifully when I said, “I’m not a child.”
“Then why do you act like one?” she yelled, and I flinched. She gestured wordlessly at me, her face tinged pink, and I flinched away again, which prompted her to keep going. “You want to tell me you’re an adult, then be an adult. You go off to parties, drink and flirt, you damage the brand. If you don’t want to be treated like a child, don’t act like a child.”
I withered under the barrage, tears building up behind my eyes even though I refused to cry. I couldn’t say anything, just stood there dumbly, forcing myself to keep looking her head-on, and she sighed again, shorter and harder this time, as she shook her head, shoulders falling.
