Epilogue
ANOTHER ONE DOWN
The Matchmaker’s Book Club had never finished a book.
This was, Gerri reflected, entirely by design.
The books were props—beautiful ones, leather-bound and selected for spine aesthetics, arranged on the parlor table of the Wixx brownstone between a tray of French pastries and a ceramic pot of matcha that Suki refreshed with the timing of a Swiss clock.
No one had read the selected title. No one would.
The books existed to give the gathering a name that sounded respectable when husbands asked and harmless when press inquired, and beneath that respectable, harmless name operated the most effective romantic intelligence network on the eastern seaboard.
Gerri loved this about the club. She loved all of it—the women, the gossip, the pastries, the quiet ferocity with which a roomful of powerful mothers pursued happiness for their children.
But mostly she loved the brownstone. The shift from the Plaza Hotel events of last year to Suki’s home marked an evolution: these women were no longer acquaintances gathered around a matchmaker.
They were friends. Friends who happened to control a combined net worth that could purchase a small country and who spent Thursday evenings plotting love lives instead of acquisitions.
She stood at the parlor window, lemon cookie in hand, watching the room fill.
Suki moved between guests with the teapot, dispensing matcha and silence in equal measure.
She wore a charcoal cardigan over a white blouse, Hideo’s ring on its chain catching light at her throat, and her expression carried a benevolence Gerri had never seen before—as though the engagement had loosened a knot five years in the making.
Colette arrived with a tower of pastries and an energy level that had not dropped below euphoric since the proposal.
She wore emerald tonight—a jewel-toned blouse with sleeves that billowed when she gestured, which was constantly—and she set the pastry tower on the table with the solemnity of a woman presenting a doctoral thesis.
“Pain au chocolat,” she announced to the room. “Almond croissants. Financiers with Dojin’s honey.” She paused for effect. “The honey is from the rooftop. Where the proposal happened. Among the bees.” Her eyes swept the room, daring anyone to not find this unbearably romantic.
Suki poured Colette’s matcha without looking up. “You’ve mentioned the bees.”
“The bees have been promoted to family. Motion carried. No dissent accepted.”
Gerri bit into her cookie and smiled. This—right here—was why she did what she did.
Not for the credit, which she never received.
Not for the payment, which she never accepted.
For the afterwards. For the moment when the mothers stopped worrying and started bragging, when the anxiety that had driven them to a matchmaker’s door transformed into the specific, radiant insufferability of a parent whose child had found love.
Ozara Stone arrived next. Lumi’s mother moved through the brownstone with the comfortable familiarity of a frequent guest, kissing Suki’s cheek, complimenting the matcha, settling into the armchair by the fireplace.
Her daughter was married to a wolf alpha and expecting their first child, which meant Ozara had earned the right to observe everyone else’s romantic chaos from a position of serene completion.
“How’s Lumi?” Akemi asked, sitting beside her. The two mothers had found each other at these gatherings the way magnets found north—inevitability dressed as accident. Both had watched their children navigate romances with shifters, both had worried, both had been proven spectacularly wrong.
Revka Axan settled on the sofa—Zeir’s mother, silver-haired, regal in dark silk.
Her son had found a mate and produced an heir, which in wolf dynasty terms meant her work was done, and she could relax for the first time in thirty-seven years.
She accepted matcha from Suki with a nod and a murmured “todah” that made Suki’s mouth curve one millimeter.
The room settled. Twelve women. Matcha, pastries, the warm glow of the brownstone parlor where Hideo’s art hung on every wall and his absence sat in the chair by the window and his legacy—reborn, protected, alive—hummed through every conversation like a low, steady note.
Gerri waited. She was very good at waiting. Matchmakers, like gardeners, understood that timing was the difference between a bloom and a missed season, and Gerri Wilder had never missed a season in her life.
“Another couple down.”
She said it to the room at large, standing by the fireplace, cookie in hand. The women turned to her with the attentive focus of a boardroom—because that was what this was, a boardroom disguised as a book club, and Gerri was the CEO.
“Bears are easier than wolves. More patient. Less brooding. Though the honey courtship was unexpected.” She broke the cookie in half. Considered. “I’ve never had a match where the relationship could be measured in apiary output.”
Colette preened. “My son’s rooftop produces eight varieties.”
“Eight varieties of honey and one variety of romance: overwhelming.” Gerri ate the cookie half. “The woman fills stadiums with her voice. The man fills kitchens with bread. They were always going to find each other. I merely… adjusted the GPS.”
Suki set down her teacup. “You introduced my granddaughter’s agent to Keiser Entertainment’s casting director at a charity gala last year.”
The room went quiet.
Gerri met Suki’s eyes. Two women who traded in economy—one with cookies, one with silence. Suki had figured it out. Suki Saitō missed nothing.
“Did I?” Gerri’s smile was pristine. “I recall a lovely gala. Excellent champagne. Your agent happened to be standing near the casting director and I may have mentioned that Keiser’s new project required a voice actress with range and Japanese cultural fluency, and that the Saitō granddaughter had both in abundance.
Organic conversation. Completely unplanned. ”
Suki picked up her tea. Sipped. Set it down.
“Thank you.”
Two words. From Suki Saitō, they landed like an ovation. Gerri inclined her head. The exchange was complete—acknowledged, appreciated, filed away. Neither woman would mention it again.
Colette, who had watched this with the rapt attention of an opera patron at a duet, dabbed her eye with a silk napkin.
“Beautiful. Beautiful. Stellan, are you hearing this?” She was FaceTiming her husband.
He was not at the book club. He was at home, carving, and appeared on screen as a large, patient face behind sawdust.
Stellan nodded once.
“He’s moved,” Colette announced, turning the phone to show the room. “He won’t say it, but he’s moved.”
Stellan’s expression did not change. The call ended. Colette put the phone down, satisfied.
Akemi leaned toward Ozara. “Nari sent photos of the ring yesterday. Amber. Gold. She says it matches his eyes.”
“Did he know it matched his eyes?”
“He chose it thinking of her. She sees him in it.” Akemi’s smile was slow and total—the contentment of a mother who had spent months terrified that her daughter’s heart would be broken by the same industry that had stolen her father-in-law’s work, and had instead watched her daughter fight, win, fall in love, and get proposed to on a rooftop full of bees.
“James cried at the premiere. He’ll deny it. I have photographs.”
“Evidence is important in a family of lawyers.” Akemi set her cup down. “Mercer’s sentencing was last month. Eleven years. Assets frozen pending restitution to every artist his structure touched. James did not smile in court. He was very deliberate about that.”
Ozara raised her matcha in salute. “The restraint of a true professional.”
Gerri watched them. The mothers. The network.
Each match brought three new women to the next gathering—word spreading through the precise channels of wealth and worry, from penthouse to penthouse, gala to gala, the quiet desperation of parents who had given their children everything except the one thing money couldn’t buy.