Chapter 9: Hot Mic

Russell sent a car for me on Thursday.

I sent it away.

"I have a driver," I told the man in the cap, and he looked at Abe in my Audi and decided not to argue.

Abe didn't like it.

"He'll be inside all night," he said. "With his eyes on you."

"That's why I want you outside."

"I can't go in, Yvette."

"I know. Keep him looking at me, not at you." I fixed my earring in the visor mirror.

"I'm not asking you to come in. I'm asking you to be the one who drives me home."

He looked at me in my black dress for a long time.

"I'll be at the curb," he said.

Our flagship store took up a whole corner in River North, three floors of sofas and lamps my father had picked out himself.

Tonight the sofas were pushed to the walls, and there was a string quartet where the dining tables usually were.

Two hundred people were drinking champagne in a furniture store.

Russell met me at the door and kissed my cheek in front of a photographer.

"You look like the money's already in the bank," he said.

"Is it?"

"Twenty million, wired at five." He put my hand on his arm. "The other twenty when you set a date."

"A date for what?"

He laughed and didn't answer, and steered me into the crowd.

Brooke was there.

The audit had her locked out of her own office, and she was here anyway, in red silk, holding court by the lamps.

She raised her glass to me across the room.

At nine, Russell went up to the little stage by the stairs.

He tapped the microphone and the quartet stopped.

"Thirty years ago," he said, "Yvette's father built a company on the idea that a home should be a safe place."

People murmured.

My father's name in his mouth made my skin crawl, and I didn't know why yet.

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