The restaurant hummed with power lunches and whispered deals. Miriam Bloom commanded her corner booth like a queen holding court, red lips curved in anticipation as I approached. Her black dress cut sharp angles against the cream leather, every inch of her radiating predatory elegance.
"Angie Blake, in the flesh." She air-kissed both my cheeks, her perfume aggressive and expensive—something French and expensive. "Four months of text messages and finally you surface."
"You demanded proof of life." I slid into the booth, catching the waiter's eye with a gesture that had him rushing over with wine. "Here I am."
"Your messages have been deliciously cryptic." Miriam leaned forward, her manicured nails drumming against the marble table like a countdown to execution. "Andrew's having an affair, violent reconciliation sex, and last night—something about him being with both of you?"
The waiter poured Sancerre with practiced invisibility. I waited until his shadow retreated before leaning in conspiratorially. "Hannah Rogers. Remember her?"
"Your college friend who disappeared three years ago?" Miriam's eyebrow arched with surgical precision.
"She's back. Fucking my husband. Thinking she's won." I pulled out my phone, the screen's glow casting shadows across my face as I showed her the message exchange. "But I'm orchestrating something different."
"Which is?" She attacked her salad like it had personally offended her, each stab of her fork punctuating her curiosity.
"A polygamous relationship. All three of us."
Miriam's laugh shattered against crystal glasses, causing the investment banker two tables over to spill his martini. "You're joking."
"Andrew painted Hannah and me together—sexually, intimately—before it happened. His fantasy made manifest." I traced the rim of my wine glass, watching the light fracture through the liquid. "I'm going to give him exactly that."
"Does Hannah know she's being collected?" Miriam's smile could have cut glass.
"Hannah thinks she's stealing him. She has no idea what's coming." My fingers flew across the phone screen with practiced violence: Bring the painting home tonight. The one from the studio. I want to enjoy it privately.
His response blazed across the screen before I could even set the phone down: God, yes. I'm thrilled you're embracing this new side of yourself. This new kind of love.
"New kind of love." Miriam's fork paused midway to her mouth, a piece of arugula dangling like a green flag of surrender. "You don't love him."
"Love is irrelevant." I took a long pull of wine, feeling it burn cold down my throat.
"Andrew's one of those men you want to own and sleep with, not love. He's an ornament to your status, a flourish." She gestured with her fork, sending drops of vinaigrette flying. "Beautiful, functional, replaceable."
"Not replaceable. Not yet." I met her gaze directly, letting her see the calculation behind my eyes. "First, I need to arrange them properly."
"Your depression—" She gestured at my face with the kind of blunt assessment only old friends could manage. "It's gone? Have these revenge games done what therapy couldn't?"
"Anger burns hotter than sadness." I signaled for another glass of wine, my movements sharp and decisive.
"And Hannah? What's her weakness?"
"Debt. Forty-seven thousand and climbing." My phone vibrated against the marble—the PI sending updates that made my pulse quicken. "She's desperate for his money, but there's more. She wants me too. I saw it at the studio."
"Delicious." Miriam raised her glass, the gesture grandiose enough for a coronation. "To becoming a man-eater."
"To winning."
We clinked glasses hard enough to risk cracking them. Then we finished lunch discussing Davidson's latest power play and the new gallery opening, but my mind was already three moves ahead.
Back at the office, the afternoon crawled through contracts and conference calls. Sarah entered with acquisition papers at four o'clock, her heels clicking against marble with metronomic precision. She arranged them across my desk like she was setting a table for dignitaries—each document perfectly aligned.
"Robertson deal, Camden merger, Westfield preliminary agreement." Her voice carried its usual professional cadence, but I caught something else—a slight tremor of concern.
I signed mechanically, the pen heavy in my hand as I watched her movements. A new silver bracelet caught the afternoon light streaming through my floor-to-ceiling windows—expensive, intimate, the kind of gift that came with promises attached.
"Sarah, wait." The words erupted like champagne from a shaken bottle. "Can I ask you something personal? Feel free to say no."
She paused at the door, papers clutched against her chest like armor, her knuckles white against the manila folders. "Of course."
"It's about who we're drawn to. Do you find yourself more into men, women... or both?" The question hung in the air between us, heavy as smoke.
Color flooded her cheeks like spilled wine across white linen. "That's quite a question."
"I'm sorry if I've overstepped—"
"No, it's fine." She shifted the papers to one arm, her free hand moving in small, elegant gestures as she spoke. "For me, connection transcends labels. Shape, gender—those come after. The soul recognizes its echo first."
"Beautiful philosophy." I stood, moving around the desk, my fingers trailing along its polished edge.
"Practical reality." Her smile sharpened like a blade finding its edge. "Chemistry doesn't follow rules."
"No. It doesn't."
She left, but the conversation's weight lingered in the office—impossible to ignore.
I stood here for a moment. Hannah’s face rose in my mind like a bruise you can’t stop pressing—pretty, stubborn, always turning toward the nearest light as if it owed her warmth.
Could I make her turn toward me instead? Not as a supplicant or a project or a debt to be balanced, but as someone who looks and sees the person holding the strings and still decides to step closer.
Or maybe I was lying to myself. Maybe there was only the clean arithmetic of ruin. Maybe what I wanted—what I was best at—was not to win her, but to break her neatly, and file the pieces away like receipts.
I could do that. I’d done it before. I could do it again.
The screen of my phone lit with nothing in particular, a calendar nudge for a meeting I no longer cared about. I turned it face down and exhaled, slow.
“Love or ash,” I murmured to the empty room. The words tasted like metal. I picked up my pen, wrote a single name on a yellow note, and pressed it flat beneath my palm as if that could keep the future still.
Hannah