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Tristan makes his way over to me and collapses into a light-colored armchair. "Nah. This is all very last-minute. I just flew in from Boston for the sole purpose of seeing you. Well, you and my mom. You know how she is. She would not be very happy with me if I came into town and didn’t at least take her out to a nice dinner."
The image of Mrs. Bond floats into my consciousness—blonde and smiling and extremely chic. In many ways, she and her son are basically the same person. That is, if she had a job in corporate finance, taking apart businesses with a ruthless passion that is belied by an easy-going nature.
"Well, I’m glad to see you. I’m afraid that you’ll have to bear with me for a little while, though. I’m trying to track down a woman that I saw at the gala event that Remy hosted last night. I think that she holds the key to taking down my brother."
I sit down, paging through the laptop that’s open before me. Tristen sits up, his eyebrows rising.
"Oh?" He says. “When youcall him that name, I often get confused. It’s not like you have any other brothers to distinguish Burn from."
Shooting him a look, I shrug. "You know him as well as anyone. After all, you went to high school with my brother too."
He grimaces. "Everybody that’s from a good family in the Tri-County area went to St. Mary’s. We were raised with blue blood in our veins." His lips twitch. "Some of us more so than others."
“Are you perhaps referring to my brother?”
Tristan stands up, moving toward the window. "Not him specifically. But yes. He seems to have taken who your grandfather is more to heart than anyone I know. Like your grandfather being a billionaire is something that Burn himself personally accomplished. It’s a little…"
He breaks off, perhaps searching for a word. I wave him off. "There's no need to be nice for my sake. I know just what Burn is. He's a snake and a toad, at best a boot licker.” I push up my sleeve. "It’s hard to realize that I’ve grown apart from him sometimes. But we could not be more different."
"I would agree with that. Now what exactly is your plan with this random girl that you think your brother knows?"
Pushing my laptop away, I lean forward. "Right. So I think that Burn fucked her."
He turns to me with a frown on his face. "And? Your brother being a cheating scoundrel should not be any great surprise. It certainly isn’t to me. I played Monopoly and Connect Four with him as a kid. He was a cheater then, and he’s a cheater now. What’s the surprise there?"
I purse my lips. "No surprise, really. But I still want him to pay for stealing away my fiancée."
"Not this again. Daisy isn’t that great, man. Don’t you realize that you can date and marry any woman on the planet?"
"Notanywoman. Daisy left me. She told me that my brother is a better version of me."
"So what? She is crazy, obviously. I don’t understand why you are willing to go to such lengths to get her back."
I sit back in my seat, affronted. "I’m not planning on getting her back. I am planning on showing her that she made the wrong choice. She jumped ship to become engaged to my brother, and I for one want her to realize that it was the biggest mistake of her whole life."
Tristen schools his expression, pushing back his hair with a hand. "And this girl is going to help you do that?"
"Yes. Talia. But the very first step is to figure out who she actually is. Make sure that she’s legit."
Tristan pulls out his phone and looks down at it, mumbling halfheartedly. "What’d you say her last name is?"
"Chance. Talia Chance. At least, that’s the name she gave me."
He screws up his face as he searches for something on his phone.
"Ah." He moves closer to me, his brow furrowing. "I got her. Talia Chance, a two thousand eighteen Harwicke High School graduate.” He turns his phone toward me. "Is this her?"
There she is, her coppery hair braided over her shoulder, her expression reserved and muted. She is standing with a cluster of girls, holding a patchwork quilt, and looking as though she would prefer not to be in the photo at all. I cock a brow, wondering if she might be more attractive if she just dressed differently and did something with her hair. She has creamy, flawless skin and vivid blue eyes. In certain lights, I suppose she could be considered attractive.
"That’s her," I say. "She ran away from me last night while I was trying to find out what Daisy wanted."
Tristen sends me a short look, choosing not to comment on that. Instead, he pulls his cell phone back and looks through the page, trying to gain insight from it. "Well, it says that she works at a local bookstore. And there are a number of posts here about being‘thrifty’. Patching jeans, resoling her shoes, mending a coat. A disgusting amount of posts about getting money from recycling. So… It’s likely that she doesn’t come from money."
I picture her, remembering the little details about her from last night. Her obviously worn coat, her frumpy skirt, her army boots. My lips twitch.
"No, that much is obvious. She doesn’t seem to have two nickels to rub together. It’s funny that a woman like that should even know my brother. I wonder how they came into contact?"
He squints down at his phone and shrugs. "It’s weird, most of the pictures on her Instagram are about books or places here in town. There are no flashy cars, no pictures of her partying, and no new vacations. So I would say that either she met Burn when she was a fish out of water, or vice versa."
