Chapter 15 #2
"I'm not asking you to do anything you haven't already done," Cecelia said quietly. "You used Grant's name to get this job. You used his reputation to build your career. The only difference between what I'm asking and what you've already done is that you'd prefer not to think of it that way."
Emmy's breath caught. Not because the words were cruel. Because they were true.
She had used Grant. She'd walked into this office with a lie and spent three months building a career on the back of it. She'd told herself it was mutual—that she was helping him, that the arrangement served them both, that the foundation she'd built on something borrowed was somehow still solid.
And Cecelia was right. The only difference was scale.
But that was also exactly the point.
"You're right," Emmy said.
Cecelia's eyebrows rose—barely, the smallest tell of surprise.
"I did use him. I used his name to get this job, and I used his trust to keep it, and when it blew up, he was the one who paid for it." Emmy's voice was steady. Quiet. Stripped of the polish. "That's exactly why I'm not going to do it again."
She reached into her blazer pocket. Pulled out her Elite Connections ID badge—the one she'd clipped to her lapel every morning since September, the one with the headshot she'd agonized over, the laminated proof that she'd finally arrived somewhere that mattered.
She set it on Cecelia's desk.
"I quit."
Cecelia looked at the badge. Then at Emmy.
"That's dramatic." Cecelia's voice was cool. Almost amused. "And unnecessary. I'm not firing you, Emmy. This is the biggest opportunity of your career."
"It's the biggest opportunity of your career. I was just the match that lit it."
The amusement drained. What replaced it was colder, more precise—the version of Cecelia that lived beneath the media training, beneath the silk blouses and the knowing smiles and the a lady never tells. The architect.
"You understand," Cecelia said, her voice barely above a conversational register, "that matchmaking is a small world.
People talk. They talk to me, and they talk about me, and when I speak, people in this industry listen.
" She sat back down. Folded her hands. A gesture of conclusion, not negotiation.
"I wish you well. I do. But I'd encourage you to think carefully about what comes next. "
Not a threat. Cecelia Ferrance didn't make threats. She made observations about the weather and let you decide whether to bring an umbrella.
"I have thought about it," Emmy said. "That's why I'm leaving."
She turned toward the door.
"Emmy."
She stopped but didn’t turn around.
"Your non-compete is eighteen months. And your confidentiality agreement with this firm is permanent." A pause, timed like a press interview. "I trust you'll honor both."
Emmy opened the door. The noise of the office rushed in—phones, voices, the hum of two hundred and fourteen new opportunities being converted into revenue.
The muted television was still running Grant's airport footage on a loop.
Someone had put up a small Christmas tree on the filing cabinet near the break room.
Silver tinsel. No ornaments. Efficient festivity.
She walked through it without looking back.
The reception area felt different on the way out.
Smaller, somehow. Or maybe Emmy was just seeing it clearly for the first time—the photographs of beautiful couples on yachts, the fresh flowers that were replaced every Monday regardless of who was drowning, the magazines fanned on the coffee table at precisely the angle that suggested casual elegance.
A terrarium. Beautifully designed, temperature-controlled, not meant for living in.
Her mother's office at the university had books stacked on every surface and a coffee mug that read Exit, Pursued by a Deadline.
Her father's study smelled like eucalyptus lozenges and the particular anxiety of a man who'd once convinced himself a hangnail was early-onset gangrene.
Those rooms were messy and human and real.
This place was a display case.
Beckanne was still at the front desk, headset on, but between calls for the first time all afternoon.
She watched Emmy approach with the same expression she'd worn when Emmy arrived—half pity, half satisfaction—except now her head was tilted, like she was watching the final act of a show she'd been following all season.
Emmy should have walked straight to the elevator. She had her bag, her phone, the blazer that was starting to feel less like armor and more like a costume she'd forgotten to return. There was nothing left for her here.
But she stopped.
"Beckanne."
Beckanne pulled off her headset. "Ms. Woodhouse."
Ms. Woodhouse. Not Emmy. Three months and they'd never crossed that line—Beckanne kept her professional distance the way a theater usher keeps the audience from the stage. She saw everything. She participated in nothing.
"Sabine's desk is empty," Emmy said. "On the biggest day in Elite Connections history, she's not here."
Beckanne's expression didn't change, but her hands went still on the keyboard. The way a cat goes still when it spots something to toy with.
"Ms. Greer is on personal leave," Beckanne said. Carefully neutral. The voice of someone who'd been trained to give nothing away but was absolutely dying to.
"Personal leave." Emmy repeated it. Turned the phrase over. "During this."
Beckanne glanced toward Cecelia's closed office door. Then back at Emmy. She was doing the math—discretion versus the sheer pleasure of telling someone.
"I really shouldn't—"
"I just quit, Beckanne. I don't work here anymore. Whatever you tell me can't get either of us in trouble."
Beckanne's professional mask didn't drop—it tilted, just enough to let the gossip through.
"She's in New York." Beckanne's voice fell to a murmur. "She and Mr. Duke flew out Friday morning. Together." She let that land. "Together-together."
Emmy's hand found the edge of the reception desk. She wasn't devastated. She wasn't even particularly shocked. It was closer to the feeling of finally finding your keys in the pocket you'd already checked twice—obvious, stupid, there the whole time.
"Sabine and Tyce."
"Since at least the golf tournament. Maybe longer.
" Beckanne was leaning forward now, the headset abandoned, her voice conspirators-quiet.
"Margot in client services saw them at a restaurant in the South End back in September—she thought it was a client meeting, but she said the body language was.
.." Beckanne searched for the diplomatic word. "Unambiguous."
September. Before the golf tournament. Before Tyce had handed Emmy a driver and told her not to be boring.
Before he'd called her beautiful and babe and sent flowers wrapped in condescension.
Before he'd ground against other women at the auction while Sabine watched from the bar with champagne and fury and a plan Emmy had been too blind to see.
I've got my eye on someone already.
Emmy had filed that under flirtation directed at me, because of course she had. And hadn’t Ryan told Harper that Tyce had been hanging around? It hadn’t seemed important at the time.
"What are they doing in New York?" Emmy asked. She noted this the way you note the weather—a fact about the world, observable from a distance.
"New satellite office." Beckanne was fully committed now. "Sabine is heading it up. Mr. Duke is bringing his network—tennis connections, ultra-high-net-worth clients. Cecelia announced it internally yesterday morning." She paused. "After Sabine's success at the auction."
The day after.
Not before. After. After Sabine had steered Petra from Boston After Dark straight to Emmy's guilt-stricken face and let the reporter do the math.
After the leak had generated two hundred and fourteen new client inquiries and a call from Good Morning America.
After Sabine had proven, in the most efficient way possible, exactly what she was willing to do for the firm.
And Cecelia had rewarded her for it.
It clicked. All of it, all at once.
Sabine hadn't sabotaged Emmy out of jealousy. Sabine had used her.
Emmy was Tyce's matchmaker. On paper, Emmy was the one managing his search.
Which meant that as long as Emmy was visibly working with Tyce—meetings, texts, the auction—nobody would look twice at Sabine.
Emmy was the red herring. The girl Tyce flirted with publicly so nobody asked who he was sleeping with privately.
It was against company policy to date clients.
Sabine knew that better than anyone—six years at Elite Connections, six years watching Cecelia enforce it without mercy.
If Sabine's relationship with Tyce had come out while he was an active client, the New York office would have gone to someone else.
Her career would have been over. She needed cover.
She needed someone else holding Tyce's file, someone Tyce could flirt with at events, someone visible enough to keep the attention off the senior matchmaker in the background.
She needed Emmy.
And when Emmy had served her purpose—when the New York deal was close enough to lock down—Sabine had tipped Petra off at the auction.
Not to destroy Emmy. To create enough chaos that nobody would notice Sabine and Tyce slipping out the back door together.
Emmy's humiliation was just the exit strategy.
And the text. The text Sabine had sent during the auction, right when everything was falling apart. Exciting news to share soon. Emmy had assumed it was a wrong number. Or a taunt.
It was neither. It was a victory lap.