“You’ve grown far too comfortable in that velvet, Celeste. I can smell the sentimentality on you from across the hallway, and it’s beginning to rot the foundation of this deal.”

The voice cut through the steam of my morning tea like a serrated blade. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to. Emelia Aldridge was standing in the doorway of the morning room, her silhouette framed by the sharp, unforgiving light of a New York spring. She was dressed in a suit of winter-white wool, looking every bit the matriarch of a dynasty that had never learned the meaning of the word mercy.

I set the fine bone china back...