6. Once Upon a Safe Haven
ONCE UPON A SAFE HAVEN
G enevieve Courtenay was a very bad liar. It was a well-documented affliction. God knows she’d paid for it with nannies, boarding school teachers, and pupils alike many times, because she was that bad at it. So often, she had, in fact, dropped the practice altogether.
She’d come out to her parents pretty much as soon as she’d figured herself out, since there was no use hiding it.
Her father, absent as he often was, would have still seen through whatever stammering explanation she’d have given to his vague, perfunctory question whether she was seeing anyone.
So Vi stopped hiding and took his disappointment, as well as her stepsisters’ ridicule.
If her stepmother had thoughts about the matter, Gwyneth did not bother sharing.
She rarely bothered with anything when it came to Vi.
She’d married her father when Vi was a shy, introverted, and mostly silent teenager hiding in her room, and she never cared enough to pry her out of it.
Gwyneth had her daughters, who were the apple of her eye, and the rest mattered very little.
She liked her clothes to be couture, her cars to be Mercedes, and her lodgings at the Ritz.
She also liked that Vi was rarely heard or seen.
So it was particularly disconcerting that, during dinner at her parents’ penthouse on the Rue de Rivoli, it was Gwyneth who homed in on Vi’s skittishness surrounding the subject of her current employment.
“How is Lilien Haus, Genevieve? Rumor has it Franziska is having a difficult time with next year’s collection.”
That was the other thing. Gwyneth, who was neither gainful nor employed, knew every single rumor that Paris—or London or New York, depending on where the family was at the given moment—had to offer.
She attended every party, every event, and every drawing room tea, where such salient details were currency. And Gwyneth knew their value very well.
With all the sisters employed at various fashion houses this summer, it appeared like, for once, the entirety of the Courtenays’ world revolved around couture. Vi, who hadn’t given it any thought months ago when the arrangements were announced, was now second-guessing many of those decisions.
“Ah…”, she took a careful bite of her fish, the cook as excellent as ever, and pretended to chew to allow anyone else to interject.
Inevitably, and blessedly in this instance, Kylie took it upon herself to make that happen.
“I heard she’s a raving demon. And that Lilien is a hellscape.
That she runs around in those shit-stomping boots of hers, kicking everything and everyone.
I actually half expected Vi to come home beaten and bruised.
If anyone is going to set that woman off, it’s sure to be you.
What with you falling and stumbling and stammering and whatever other disaster you manage to get yourself into… ”
The old jab didn’t even hurt. Kylie wasn’t trying too hard. Vi stabbed a piece of glazed carrot and waited for another beat.
True to form, Gigi wasn’t far behind. “Mother, I kept telling you it was a bad idea to get Vi this job. Either Kylie or I should have landed Lilien Haus. It’s actually a challenge.
I’m already bored with my cozy office and attending all these planning meetings.
” Gigi looked Vi up and down with a smirk on her face, and Vi took a calming breath.
Never let them see you uncomfortable. They will stick their fingers in that wound until it bleeds all over you.
The piece of fortune cookie wisdom came to her unbidden. She didn’t need a self-help book to keep her mouth shut. That was the only thing that had saved her these past ten years, anyway.
Gigi sneered, her pretty face turning ugly on a dime. “Still, this one being the walking calamity she is, I bet she’s getting a lot of menial tasks there. Are you a good little gopher, Vi?”
The girls laughed, and Gwyneth proceeded to signal for a second helping with a snap of her fingers, already looking bored with the conversation around her.
Vi lowered her eyes to her plate. The joy of being more than that in the past weeks, the nights spent with Chiara practicing photography or being her own personal mannequin—even if she’d opened her big mouth and somehow offended Chiara—was all hers, and she was not going to be sharing any of that with her family.
Still, when she noticed the sudden chill, she lifted her head to see her father’s gaze on her.
His expression was calculating, eyes cold and aloof.
Vi had seen that look before. As if he wasn’t looking at her at all, as if she was not important in what he was thinking, a means to an end, a tool, and he was figuring out how to use it more efficiently.
Vi almost shivered, collecting herself at the last moment and reaching for her glass. Charles said nothing, his eyes finally leaving her, and focusing his attention on Kylie who was shifting in her seat, a ball of energy this evening, her voice high-pitched with excitement as she spoke.
“And how did you all like the mess at Lucci? Total disaster. I thought Romina would fling herself off that ridiculous, kitschy balcony of theirs. So much drama!”
Vi gripped the fork tighter as dread pooled in her stomach. Her stepsister was spending her summer working for them. She, of course, wasn’t a gopher. Tucked safely into the marketing department, away from any kind of hard labor, Kylie was enjoying a decidedly fun and easy time.
“How did Alberto react?” Charles’ voice held all the nonchalance of a summer breeze, yet it set Vi’s teeth on edge. He wasn’t the family member who’d care about any of this. Gwyneth was the gossipy fashionista. But her stepmother held her tongue.
Kylie—pleased to, for once, attract Charles’ precious attention—preened at being center stage at the family table. Vi could practically see Gigi fuming in helpless bitterness at being downgraded to ‘of no consequence’ again.
“Alberto was turning all kinds of different shades of color. I’ve never seen a man go from pale to red to purple in the span of minutes. I swear, I thought he’d suffered some kind of heart attack. He’s such a handsome man. Dunno what he’s doing with that insipid Romina.”
“Romina is the heiress to the vast Lucci fortune. The man is a leech. Albeit a handsome one.” Gwyneth’s remark made both Kylie and Gigi stick their heads together and giggle.
“You mean like Chiara?” Gigi’s remark was thrown out there carelessly, yet Vi dropped her fork with enough clatter to suddenly find all eyes on her.
“She isn’t a leech.” She heard the words drop out of her mouth and, more so than usual, desperately wished to grab them, to swallow them, to have never uttered anything at all.
She so rarely gave her family any ammunition because, without fail, they’d load their viciousness onto those bullets and turn them against her.
“And what is she, Genevieve? Come now, impart your dubious wisdom on us…” Her father’s sharp gaze was unwavering. She’d given him an opening, shown a vulnerability, and he’d taken it and made that bullet hole wider.
“She… um… She does designs.” She looked anywhere but at Charles as she spoke and could sense the irritation radiating from him.
“Speak up, girl! Mumble, mumble . If that is how you speak at Lilien, it’s no wonder Frankie walks all over you.
” His voice dripped with so much disdain, Vi, for the thousandth time, wondered why he hated her so much, and what she could do so her own father would look at her with something at least resembling love for once.
She’d probably give her left hand for that.
Right hand too. How pathetic was it to wish for love from a parent who had nothing but contempt for you?
Still, he glared at her expectantly, and Kylie and Gigi grinned from ear to ear, enjoying her misery. Gwyneth was scrolling through her phone and predictably could not be bothered.
“Chiara designs most of Lilien’s concepts.
Frankie is just there. A figurehead, if you will.
From everything I’ve seen, Chiara is solely responsible for all the new collections and has been for much of the past decade.
” For a second, a pin could have dropped and it would have been as loud as thunder.
If Vi thought imparting this massive bit of information to her family would make her feel accomplished, she was mistaken.
Because—despite the whispered ‘omg’, ‘no way’, and ‘this is huge’ from her stepsisters and stepmother—observing the sly smile curve her father’s lips, she instantly regretted divulging this tidbit to him.
To them, information did equal currency, after all.
If Charles Courtenay had taught her one thing, it was that.
And she had just given him power in some wicked game he was playing in which she knew she was nothing but a pawn.
A pawn who seemed to have done her job for the day, because as his lips stretched back into a thin line, he looked at Vi with approval.
Still, something in Vi sensed that the approbation was dangerous.
To whom or why, she couldn’t say, and so she did the only thing that remained.
Misdirection. Call the fire onto herself and make him forget.
Strange how she was doing so much of that these days.
And all for Chiara. Maybe it was something she needed to think about more, but right now it was imperative he be distracted from whatever sinister plot he was concocting.
“And she is teaching me photography. I think she believes I can be one of the in-house photographers.”
That didn’t get Charles to even lower his wine glass.
“You? A photographer? Are we back to those useless ‘visions’ of yours, Genevieve?”
Charles reached for the newspaper again, obviously not impressed with either the conversation around him or his dinner.
“She believes in my abilities.”
Well, now she had his full attention.