Page 58 of Fallen Angel

“But I did act on it.”

Mallory nods in empathy. “And Patricia found out?”

“No. And I ended it.”

“Okay,” Mallory says, starting to get impatient. She doesn’t see what this has to do with the Blue Angel. “So what’s the problem?”

“I wasn’t just cheating on her with a normal person. I was cheating on her with … Violet.”

Mallory puts her head in her hands. “Oh, Poppy. Why her?”

“I wasn’t looking for it. It just … happened. And she’s so hot, and she just started telling me what to do and it was thrilling and I got addicted to it—to her. She really is like a drug. But I decided I was done with it. I am done with it.”

“Okay. Good. Stick with that decision.”

“I will. But some things she said last night are really bothering me. I was wondering … are you involved with her, too? Or were you?”

Mallory feels a tingle of alarm.

“What? No—absolutely not. Why would you think that?”

“Well, once I told her I don’t want to see her anymore, she said that every time we had sex she pretended I was you.”

Now Mallory needs cake.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. She walks to the glass display case, picks a slice of something chocolate and decadent, and wonders what kind of game Violet’s playing. With all of them.

Back at the table, fortified with her first bite of triple mocha layer cake, she says, “She was probably just trying to provoke you.”

“Except I really think she meant it. She was very calm when she said it, very matter-of-fact.”

If what Violet said is true, then it puts the night of the Plaza Hotel in an entirely new light. Violet is smart. She’s no doubt manipulative, and masterful at it. If she wanted to get to Mallory, she would first remove any obstacles in her path—like Alec. And apparently, she succeeded.

Mallory feels sick. She pushes the paper plate away. She thinks of Violet’s call to her the day she was at work, and how she responded to it by assuming the worst of Alec.

Oh god.

“But the thing that really bothered me was a comment she made about the Blue Angel,” Poppy says. “She said something like, ‘if you want to work at the Blue Angel, you will be answering to me.’”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

They sit in silence for a moment. The obvious inference is that the anonymous buyer of the club is Violet. But that can’t be true.

Poppy asks if she’s done with her cake, and Mallory pushes her plate toward her.

“I just doubt Violet has the money to buy the club,” she says. “The ambition, maybe. But that’s about it. She’s bluffing.”

They sit in silence, neither wanting to state the obvious. But it’s a pretty big coincidence for Violet to say something like that at the same time Agnes happens to be selling.

“I think we should talk to Bette,” Mallory says.

“I already texted her. She’s on her way.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Billy is at the Maritime Hotel, inside the Hiro Ballroom. When his art director suggested using that space, with its enormous paper lanterns hanging from the twenty-foot ceilings, he loved the idea for the Emma Holland cover shoot.