She follows, staccato heels sharp on the tile. “You’re being flippant, which means you’re hiding something. Deception does not look good on you, Lucy. You have a responsibility to your family. We’ve given you everything. Please, don’t embarrass us by slumming with criminals.”
“Don’t talk like that–it’s offensive. I’m not discussing my personal life with you.”
She arches a perfect brow. “Alessio Morrone is dangerous. He’s been under investigation by the DA’s office for over a decade. He’s also forty-six, Lucy—he’s twice your age.”
I want to laugh, but I don’t. If I start, I won’t stop. “I don’t love him, mother,” I say it quietly, hoping she won’t detect my lies. “This isn’t ‘eternity and diamonds.’ It’s nothing.”
She softens then, which is somehow worse. “You’re not nothing, Lucy. You’re a Stuyvesant, and a Livingston. I know that means less to you than it does to us, but you have to be careful with men like that. They’re criminals and trash who use women like you to legitimize their inferior name and strengthen their bloodlines. He’s using you.”
I cringe. I’ve always known she’s an unrepentant snob, but this is far worse than I expected.
“I know what I’m doing,” I say, except I don’t, and she must see it. “And I don’t share your insane values–or whatever you call your outdated point of view.”
She leans in and kisses me on the forehead, her palm cold against my cheek. “You always think you know better than your family. That’s why I worry. I want you to come to dinner tomorrow night. Your father wants to talk to you. He hasconcerns.” She lets herself out, shutting the door so gently I almost think I imagined the whole visit.
I stand in my empty apartment, vibrating with anger and secrets. I make it to the bathroom and turn the shower on as hot as it’ll go. I sit on the toilet lid, letting the steam fill the air until my lungs hurt. I don’t cry, but I want to.
For a moment, I picture what would happen if Alessio just stopped calling. Would I let my heart break, or would I patch up the hollow and fill it with the next disaster? Would I move on, get bored, find someone safe and gentle, and hate him for not being enough?
I look at myself in the mirror, eyes raw. There are faint bruises on my collarbones—his hands, his mouth. I touch them, tracing the pattern like I’m deciphering a map to a place I don’t want to visit, but probably will.
I turn up the water and scrub myself red. But when I step out and wrap up in a towel, the bruises remain.
Work is always a good idea. Men have a tendency to drive you off track. My ambitions are important, and I can’t allow this sudden infatuation distract me from my future as the future Vera Wang.
Vittoria’s client is a stick-thin influencer with a last name that’s been a byline in Architectural Digest since the ‘80s. She floats into the atelier on a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and entitlement, her hair wound into a bun so tight it gives me a migraine just looking at it.
Vittoria is sweetness itself: “You look incredible,” “The silk lights up your eyes, darling,” “Let’s do a little walk, see how it flows.” All I can think about is how this woman will get married once and divorced twice before thirty, and how I’m expectedto make her look like a Renaissance painting for someone who won’t remember her middle name in five years.
The fitting goes to hell in fifteen minutes. The client snags a pin and shrieks like she’s been stabbed with a steak knife. She demands a photo on her iPhone so she can “send it to the stylist,” then air-drops it to the stylist and immediately demands a different neckline. In the end, she leaves, promising to text feedback, which means she’ll be back next week with an entirely new set of requests.
We collapse onto the muslin-stained floor after she leaves. Vittoria’s face is damp with sweat, mascara smudged to her cheekbones.
“She’s going to want something already in Vogue,” she says, fanning herself with a scrap of bridal lace. “All that talk of an ‘original’ gown—what a load of shit.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
Vittoria side-glances me. “You want to get dinner?”
I shake my head. “I have to fix the bodice, and then go to my parents’ place for dinner. They’re expecting me and ready to learn why I’ve been spotted with a gangster.”
She chews her lip. “Lucy. You can talk to me. About anything, not just the work."
I thread a needle, watching how the light slicks across the steel. “What would you do if someone offered you everything you ever wanted—but you could never leave?”
She considers. “Once, I wanted to be a ballerina more than anything. When I was eight, I got a full scholarship. My mother cried for weeks—she said it was a curse, that I’d break my body before I turned twenty. But it was the only thing that ever made me want to wake up in the morning.” She cocks her head. “If someone said I could have it, but I’d be a prisoner? I think I’d have taken it and called it freedom anyway.”
Her words settle in my chest, hot and heavy. “What happened?”
She grins, a wolfish little flash. “My feet got ugly, and I got hungry, so I quit. But sometimes I regret it. Maybe you should think about it for a while longer. Don’t live with regrets, no matter how small they might be.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUCY
The doorman at my parents’ building on Park opens the glass door, his expression caught between pity and amusement. “Nice to see you again, Miss Stuyvesant,” he says, using the same voice he might use to warn someone about falling scaffolding.
“Thank you, Myron,” I say, and mean it. He’s the only person in this building who greets me by name rather than by whatever title my father’s foundation has appended to him this quarter.