The brunch with Beatrice goes suspiciously well. Which in Valmont terms means someone's either dying or planning a hostile takeover.
Miles deploys his research like a sniper with Victorian poetry quotes, mentioning her prize orchids with the casual expertise of someone who definitely didn't stay up until 3 AM reading botanical journals.
"Your Dendrobium nobile is spectacular," he says, gesturing toward the purple monstrosity that costs more than my monthly rent. "The color variation suggests you've been experimenting with temperature manipulation during dormancy?"
Beatrice actually pauses mid-butter of her scone. "Most people just say 'pretty flowers.'"
"Most people aren't dating Rae," Miles replies, smooth as the imported jam we're pretending deserves its price tag. "She's trained me to appreciate the science behind beauty."
He pulls out his phone—not to check messages like every other human under thirty, but to show her a photo. It's from two years ago, some charity thing where Beatrice is accepting an award for horticultural excellence.
Miles is in the background, holding her coat.
"I was terrified to talk to you that night," he admits. "Rae said you could spot insincerity from space."
"She wasn't wrong," Beatrice says, but her expression does something I've never seen before—it softens, just a fraction, like butter left out five minutes too long.
The rest of brunch is Miles methodically charming my grandmother with a combination of spreadsheet enthusiasm and strategic vulnerability.
He confesses to killing every succulent he's ever owned, asks her advice about soil drainage with the earnestness of someone seeking absolution, and somehow makes quarterly projections sound like poetry.
By the time we're on our third pot of tea, Beatrice is actually smiling.
Not her shark smile or her society smile, but something almost genuine.
"Well," she says, setting down her cup with a decisive porcelain clink, "you'll do. Provisionally." Relief floods through me like cheap wine at a gallery opening. Then she adds, "Dinner tonight. Seven sharp. The estate. Laurent will be joining us."
My stomach executes a triple axel straight into my shoes. "Father's coming?"
"Of course. He should meet the man who's supposedly serious about his daughter." Her smile could weaponize honey.
Miles's hand finds mine under the table and squeezes once. Steady, grounding, completely breaking rule number two but I'll yell at him later.
Later today, we pull up to the Valmont estate in Miles's Honda Civic, which looks like a food stamp at a yacht club. The dining room is intimate in the way that interrogation chambers are intimate—nowhere to hide, excellent acoustics for psychological warfare.
Father arrives fifteen minutes late because power moves are genetic. His handshake with Miles could crack walnuts, his smile sharp enough to perform surgery.
"So," father says, settling into his chair like a king taking his throne, "Miles Lynn. Florisight's... accountant?"
"Financial strategist," Miles corrects, politely but firmly.
"Ah yes, the strategy of bleeding money." Father's laugh has all the warmth of a tax audit. "Tell me about your family. What do they do?"
"My mother's a high school math teacher. Father repairs medical equipment." Miles's voice stays steady, but I see his jaw tighten.
"How refreshingly… modest." Yet Father makes 'modest' sound like 'bacterial infection.' "And you think these modest circumstances have prepared you for the Valmont legacy?"
"Father…" I start, but he steamrolls over me like he always does, like I'm background noise at his real conversation.
"It's important to understand what you're attempting to attach yourself to," he continues, dissecting Miles with his eyes. "The Valmont name carries weight after all. Responsibility. It's not something one can simply... learn from spreadsheets."
"Right," Miles says, buttering his roll with unnecessary focus. "Spreadsheets can't teach legacy. Just like legacy can't teach basic human decency, apparently."
The temperature drops ten degrees. Beatrice's eyebrows climb toward her hairline.
Father's smile becomes something that should require a weapons permit. "I'm merely concerned about my daughter's future. Her little flower hobby is already hemorrhaging trust fund money. Adding an opportunist to the equation—"
"Florisight has grown forty percent year-over-year," Miles interrupts, setting down his knife with careful precision. "Despite active sabotage from certain board members who coincidentally share Rae's last name."
"Sabotage is a strong word for fiscal responsibility."
"Like when you called her biggest client to suggest they were supporting a 'vanity project'?" Miles's voice stays level, but there's steel underneath. "Or when you tried to get her warehouse lease revoked? That kind of fiscal responsibility?"
Father's face is doing something I've never seen—he's actually caught off-guard. "You seem unusually well-informed about private business matters."
"I'm well-informed about everything concerning Rae. It's my job." Miles meets his stare directly. "My actual job, not the clerical position you keep trying to reduce it to."
"Your job," Father says slowly, like he's tasting poison, "is irrelevant. What matters is bloodline, breeding, understanding of how these things work. Dorian Hale, for instance—"
"The merger puppet you're trying to sell your daughter to?" Miles asks, and oh, there it is.
The Miles I've never seen before. The one who's been saving up words for years.
Father's whiskey tumbler hits the table hard enough to make the crystal sing. "Watch yourself, boy."
"I'm watching Rae." Miles's hands are steady now, his voice gaining strength. "I've watched her build something beautiful while you tried to tear it down because you can't stand that she succeeded without you.”
The atmosphere in the room is deadly, and it’s not dropping anytime soon.
“I've watched her work eighteen-hour days to prove she's more than your shadow. And I've watched you dismiss everything she's accomplished as a 'hobby' because acknowledging her success would mean admitting you've been wrong."
The silence that follows could be bottled and sold as industrial-strength awkward. Father's face has achieved a shade of red previously only seen in nuclear warning systems.
"You have no idea who you're speaking to," he says, each word precisely sharpened.
"I know exactly who I'm speaking to," Miles responds, and his voice is so calm it's terrifying. "I'm speaking to the man who drove away his wife with his need to control everything, and who's about to lose his daughter the same way."
Father stands so fast his chair screeches against imported marble. The sound is like nails on the chalkboard of my entire childhood. He doesn't speak, doesn't look at anyone, just leaves with the kind of dignity that's really just rage in a three-piece suit.
The dining room door closes with restraint that probably requires therapy.
"Well," Beatrice says after a pause that lasts several centuries, picking up her soup spoon, "that was illuminating."
Miles's hands are shaking now, an adrenaline crash visible in the way he reaches for his water glass and misses slightly.
I want to say something, anything, to acknowledge what just happened. How he just defended me against the man I've never been able to stand up to. How he saw through years of manipulation I'd normalized.
How he said everything I've thought but never had the courage to voice.
But before I can form words that don't sound like a Hallmark card having a breakdown, the door opens again.
"Apologies for being late," Dorian Hale says, standing in the doorway like a casting director's fever dream, all cheekbones and calculated charm. "Traffic was murder. Did I miss anything interesting?"
Beatrice's smile could fund a small war. "Oh, darling. You have no idea."