Chapter One CHAPTER One
Throwing a party really isn’t that complicated. All you need are decent food and drinks. A venue large enough to hold your guests without crowding them. Decorations to wow them—maybe some fresh seasonal flowers, a dinosaur skeleton or two, a few principals from the New York Philharmonic or the Metropolitan Opera to fiddle away in the background. Enough space on the roof for a helipad. And then, of course, the little extra touches that make a party truly special.

“Are you absolutely, positively sure we can’t do the themed peacocks?” I asked my former and also current best friend (my life is complicated) Vienna across the shiny chrome table covered with pans of sweet roll dough. It was warm back here in the bakery kitchen, great for rising dough and less great for my hair, which was currently sticking sweatily to the back of my neck.

“I’ve held multiple galas there,” Vienna said. She was sitting perfectly straight on a stool even though it didn’t have a back to lean against, her legs crossed elegantly at the ankle. Her signature sleek French twist kept her black hair off her elegant swan neck, upon which glistened not a single drop of sweat. “So I can tell you with confidence and for the third time that, yes, non-service animals are barred from the main building of the New York Public Library.”

Could I sneak them in? The last time I went to a gala there, my friend Millicent had smuggled in her emotional support Pekingese, and the staff hadn’t even noticed. To be fair, fluffy purses were in style that year and they might have mistaken it for one. Though peacocks were probably less likely to get kicked out for eating a chunk of a 1600s atlas on display.

“The peacocks come trained,” I said. “And they’re an essential part of my vision. Imagine the guests mingling while peacocks in my theme colors of violet and white are strutting around, introducing a bit of wild excitement into an otherwise ordinary party.”

This party wasn’t just any party—it was the first gala for my very own nonprofit focused on helping disadvantaged students with scholarships and whatever else they needed to stay in school, on which I’d spent a lot of blood and sweat and tears and money and also a lot of other people’s blood and sweat and tears and money over the course of the past year building. Over that year, I’d gotten to know these kids, learned all about the help they required, and understood that it fell to me to be the heroine they needed. In order to get that help, I had to impress a bunch of important people, which meant the gala had to be perfect, and perfect meant themed peacocks. Obviously.

Vienna raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “A beautiful vision. But I assume they’ve already told you no.”

I sighed. My assistant, Lina, had indeed forwarded me her emails where she’d basically begged the venue to change their policy for a night. They hadn’t budged. Then she’d forwarded me the emails she’d sent to a bunch of service dog agencies asking if it was possible to get a flock of peacocks certified as service animals, to which people had only responded to ask if this was a prank. “I suppose it would be bad form to get kicked out of the venue the night of my first gala for breaking the rules.”

“Good publicity, though,” Vienna said.

I sighed. “Only if you’re one of those people who thinks all publicity is good publicity.” No shade to those people—I used to be one of them, after all. Before the murder of my grandmother last year, I’d been a tabloid darling, reveling in the buzz of influencers discussing whether my post-club nip slip had been deliberate or if I realized that the fast-food chain I’d been starring in commercials for was under federal investigation for heavy metals in their meat (respectively, yes and no, though I did use the opportunity of the latter to ask a reporter, in my best baby voice, if that meant people were finding gold bars in their burgers, which made me into a meme).

But now? Now that I’d not only solved the murder of my grandmother but had survived months living in an apartment without a doorman or even a chef, I was a new woman. Honestly, getting herself murdered and basically forcing me to be the one to solve it was the nicest thing my grandmother had ever done for me. Old Pom would’ve strutted at the head of her peacock parade, grinning at the flashing cameras and already salivating to see what the New York Post was going to say.

New Pom wanted to be taken seriously. Which, as it turned out, was kind of hard when the entire world was used to laughing at you like everything you said and did was a joke.

“You know, one of my artists went through a bird period,” Vienna said. I bit my tongue, still fighting the Old Pom urge to play stupid even after a year, and ask if it was really possible for someone to transform into a bird. “We can see if he’ll let us include some of his works at the venue instead of live peacocks? I’m sure he’d be thrilled to get so many eyes on his art, and it would capture the spirit of what you want.”

“That’s a great idea,” I mused, and not just because it helped mine come to life. It would help both me and Vienna with our missions at once: she headed a nonprofit that worked with young artists of color. “Is he already on the guest list? Text Lina his name and she’ll put him on.” I thought for another moment. “You know what else is a great idea? Peanut butter and jelly rolls.”

“I assume that’s for the bakery and not the gala.”

“Right.” I surveyed the rolls rising under cloth before me. I’d come to the bakery—my bakery, I reminded myself with a shot of pride—to test out new fillings for the bakery’s—my bakery’s; I was still getting used to achieving things—famous sweet rolls. In about a half hour we’d put them in the oven, then do a taste test. The winners would become rotating specials. (Which I’d hired people to bake, obviously. Having my trust fund back meant that I got to do the fun parts of owning a bakery, like formulating and taste-testing new flavors of sweet rolls, and leave the less-fun parts, like waking up at three o’clock every morning to bake full batches of them, to people I paid.) “Do you think your artist might be able to make a special piece for the event? One with a peacock in my colors?”

“I’ll ask him.” She pulled out her phone. I watched her type, still feeling lucky that she was here in the first place. We’d gone through a very painful and very public friend breakup a couple of years ago, when she’d grown out of the party girl phase and I hadn’t. We’d reconnected once I’d grown out of it, too, and decided I wanted to do more with my life. “I can’t imagine he wouldn’t pull an all-nighter for an opportunity like this.”

“Fantastic.”

My phone buzzed. My assistant, Lina. “Hello?”

“Hello!” she said brightly into my ear. Lina was the… step-niece of one of the board members of the family company, I think? Or something like that. She’d graduated from college recently and wanted some nonprofit experience before going on to grad school or hunting down an MBA to marry. “I have an update for you on the Chelsea project.”

“Great. Tell me everything.”

She started talking about permits and land use and blah, blah, blah. I nodded along and focused on how great it would feel when the project was done and I was smiling for the cameras on the building’s front steps as I cut the shiny pink ribbon crossing the doorway, surrounded by the delighted faces of the kids I was helping. My nonprofit had started out focusing on giving scholarships to students at New York City colleges and universities, but I’d learned over the past year that sometimes a scholarship wasn’t enough to help many students stay in school: a number were housing or food insecure, or they didn’t have a quiet or safe place to study, or they had to work odd hours that made it difficult to go to class or get assignments done on time.

So, the project: a building that could help my students with all those things, centrally located between many of the city’s campuses. It would have a fully stocked kitchen, places to nap or sleep for a bit until they got back on their feet, a library where they could focus and study. A brilliant idea, if I could say so myself. (I could.)

“… so we’re right on track with all that,” Lina finished.

“Great,” I said, then paused. “And… everything is okay with Mr. Phlume?”

My idea may have been brilliant, but, as it turned out, even my gorgeously reestablished trust fund had limits. Renting and maintaining a big enough building in central Manhattan would’ve eaten up too much of it for my comfort. So when real estate tycoon Conrad Phlume had approached me, offering us the use of one of his currently vacant buildings at an absurdly low cost in exchange for tax write-offs and grunt work on the inside, how could I say no?

“I mean, he’s a giant asshole, but yes, everything’s okay with Mr. Phlume,” Lina said.

A few months ago, everybody who was everybody collectively decided they’d had enough of Conrad Phlume. Enough of his leers and wandering hands. Enough of his nasty jokes at other people’s expense and blustering speeches about how women didn’t belong in the boardroom. He’d been knocked off the entire city’s guest list.

And the price of readmission? Giving me a building. Did I love the idea? No. But I’d be able to do so much good with it, and all I had to do was grit my teeth and let him stare at my ass for a night. “Great. Keep me updated.”

“Will do.”

As I hung up, my phone went off. First with my timer—I swept the cheesecloth covering all my pans of rising sweet rolls off so that I could pop them into the preheated ovens—and then with a flurry of texts. I grimaced at them while putting down my pot holders. Ugh. The first couple were from Millicent and Coriander, my old friends who’d helped me perfect the art of dancing on tables and getting in and out of cars without flashing anyone. I didn’t hate them or anything. It wasn’t like they’d killed my grandmother and then tried to kill me when I figured it out, like our other friend, Opal.

But not trying to kill you was a pretty low bar for friendship.

Hey Pom!!! I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!!!

I know, right??? It’s like you’ve been avoiding us or something lol

The mature thing to do would probably be to talk to them like an adult and tell them kindly that I wasn’t avoiding them, I was just really busy. That was a lie, but it would mean I wouldn’t have to tell them I was actually avoiding them because they were bad for my image and also kind of annoying. It was bad enough I’d been forced to invite them to my gala, but the choice was between that or dealing with a flurry of posts and articles speculating about our friend breakup that would overshadow all the good I was trying to do.

Sigh. Ignore.

The next was from my brother, Nicholas. Hey, traitor. Can you offer to take Jessica shopping for your gala? She’s second-guessing everything in her closet and might show up naked.

I rolled my eyes. Well, since you put it so kindly. I didn’t think it was that terrible to want to distance myself from the family company, Afton Hotels, after everything that happened last year. Both the “family” part and the “company” part had proven themselves pretty toxic. But Nicholas did not quite agree, nor did he approve of my decision to host my gala somewhere other than the flagship hotel.

But I shrugged it off. He’d just have to deal with it. I still loved my brother. And I probably owed Jessica, his fiancée, more than a shopping trip, considering how I’d wrongly accused her of murder and all. I continued, I’ll see if she wants to go this weekend.

He didn’t thank me, which was to be expected from Nicholas. Okay. Also, did you realize you’re hosting your first gala while Mom and Dad are abroad? Mom is upset about it.

Aw, that’s too bad I had no idea.

I did have an idea. It had been entirely my idea, actually, to have Lina sneakily check with my mom’s assistant for her schedule. My parents could enjoy their seventh honeymoon in Tuscany, and I could enjoy having a gala without them in attendance.

You should call her.

I will. I definitely would not.

Messages dealt with, I tucked my phone back into my Poquette belt bag, its bubble-gum-pink stripes matching the pot holders I’d specifically commissioned for everyone who worked at the bakery. “What do you think about my guest list?”

“Can I see it?”

I grabbed my tablet from the nearby counter, blowing a puff of flour off the screen, and handed it over to Vienna. We were already almost at capacity from RSVPs—we’d barely need to contact anyone on the backup list I’d generated to keep the place from looking embarrassingly empty in case no one wanted to come. Much of the guest list was made up of people who’d donated large amounts of money to the nonprofit; others were people I wanted to impress with my transformation and show I was ready to be taken seriously; more had been chosen by me and Vienna to keep things interesting. Nobody wanted to go to a gala if the only people there were other boring, normal rich people. “The artists from your list are all coming, and the girl from that new Broadway show too.”

Vienna scrolled, the shiny screen reflecting in her dark eyes. “Wow. I can’t believe they’re all yeses.”

I sucked in a deep breath, trying to quell the nerves that sentence had unleashed in my stomach. She didn’t have to clarify who “they all” were: they were the top tier, the upper crust, the other nonprofit owners and museum board sitters and city award winners. In short, all of the people who would have previously never been seen with Pomona Afton.

Probably they were only coming to my gala because they thought it would go down in flames and they’d get to cluck their tongues at me again. But I’d show them. They’d see. They’d have to stop looking down their noses at me once they saw how serious I was about wanting to help people. They’d have to start looking… up their noses at me? Did that make sense?

Vienna continued, “What about the journalist who wrote that viral ‘eat the rich’ piece?”

I grimaced. “You don’t think he’d start a fight?”

Vienna shrugged, cracking a smile. “The one thing I’ve learned about throwing galas is that you want them to be a little spicy, as long as you personally or your organization aren’t involved in the drama. Just a little. Otherwise they blend in with all the other galas and nobody remembers you well enough to donate.”

She was probably right. Most of the galas I’d attended blurred together, but I did still remember a gala my grandmother threw back when I was a teenager, when she invited both my mom and the ex-boyfriend my mom cheated on with my dad. I still remembered that the gala had been to benefit something about preserving ancient rock formations in parks because my mom had taken a miniature replica of one of those ancient rock formations and thrown it at my grandma’s head.

Note: make sure our centerpieces weren’t easily throwable.

“Makes sense,” I said, texting Lina to dig up his contact info. Make sure to drop how many billionaires and almost-billionaires will be there and tipsy, I added, making a mental note to seat them apart so that the reporter could only approach the billionaires while everyone was mingling, giving the billionaires an escape hatch. Spicy was good, but not hot enough to make my donors cry. “What else should I remember?”

“Figure out who your fattest targets are,” Vienna said promptly, as if she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Not literally. You want to make sure you’re spending a lot of time chatting up and flattering a few people who both have a ton of money and might be especially inclined toward your cause for some personal reason.”

I thought for a moment, scanning the list again. “Ooh, probably Kevin Miller.”

“The TED Talk guy?”

“Yeah,” I said, tapping his name. I didn’t know him super well, since he was closer to my parents’ age than mine, but he was a regular on the gala circuit. “The one who built himself up from nothing and never shuts up about it, so I’m thinking he’ll probably want to help other people build themselves up from nothing, right?”

“Hopefully.”

“Oh, and Denise Ryan.”

“The divorcée?”

“She hates being called that,” I said. No matter how accurate it was, considering she’d inherited her massive fortune when her ex-husband, a tech mogul, divorced her for, surprisingly, an older woman. Dude subverting expectations over here. “She made that public vow to give away all her money. If she’s giving it away, I’ll take it.”

Vienna smirked. “Sounds like a good bet.”

“And there’s Jack Wohl.” He’d founded the hedge fund my parents and the family business invested in. He had an interest in keeping them invested in his company, and hopefully he’d assume one way of keeping them happy was investing in their daughter. “Though he has those connections to Greystone, right?” I grimaced. Greystone Inc. was the most malevolent entity in the corporate finance world, which was full of malevolent entities—over the years they’d been called out for burning enormous stretches of rainforest, using child slave labor in its cobalt mines, causing the extinction of multiple species of panda, and more.

Vienna stared down at the tablet. “He’s not part of them, though, right? Just associated with them?”

“No, but I’m not sure how much that matters.” Vienna’s crowd would never accept me if they found out I was taking money from a place like Greystone. They’d probably love it if I was—they could continue staring down their noses and shaking their heads at me. And the amount of good I’d be doing for the kids would be offset by the amount of harm I’d be doing elsewhere. “I’ll have to verify that—”

The door to the kitchen swung open, cutting me off as I swiveled to see who was there. Maybe Ellie or Sage, two of my workers who knew I delighted in being called in when jerks asked to see the manager so that I could dramatically puff myself up like one of those really fluffy pigeons and tell them to go stuff themselves because I was the manager.

But no, it was Gabe. My lips broke automatically into a smile upon seeing that familiar swoop of black hair, the defined cheekbones dusted with stubble, the smoldering dark glare. Though his eyes weren’t smoldering now. Or glaring, the way they’d been when I first turned up on his doorstep (to be fair, I started out as a terrible roommate). They’d brightened as soon as they’d seen me, even though I wasn’t wearing any makeup and my hair was up in a quick actually-messy-not-artfully-messy bun and there was flour all over my yoga pants.

“Hey,” he said, and it was truly amazing how one measly word had the power to make me feel so warm inside. “I was told something about sweet rolls that needed taste testing?”

“They’ve still got about fifteen minutes in the oven,” I said.

Gabe turned as if to go. “Okay, see you then.”

I rolled my eyes affectionately as he turned back around, then swooped in to give me a kiss. “How was your day?” I asked.

“It was fine,” he said, and apparently “fine” meant that not one but two teenagers had told him that he made history sound interesting, which was about the highest compliment you could get from a teenager. Having just graduated with his master’s degree in education, he was spending the spring and summer tutoring until his official job as a history teacher at a high school in East Harlem started this fall. “I have no idea how they know about me and you, but it seems that dating Pomona Afton makes me extremely cool.”

“Hell yes, it does,” said Vienna from her stool, and Gabe jumped a little bit as if he hadn’t noticed her, even though she was right there. Because the man only had eyes for me. Yes, I loved it.

“Oh, hey, Vienna,” he said. “How’s everything?”

“Good, good,” she said. “We’re figuring out some of the final pieces for the big night.”

Which seemed to have been far more difficult than his day spent with teenagers who adored him. “The seating chart for the gala is simply impossible,” I said with a gusty sigh that I hoped conveyed the difficulty but also that I was world-weary enough that it wouldn’t conquer me. “Coriander’s slept with so many people’s husbands that the only place I can put her without insulting anyone is in the corner behind a bookshelf, which is apparently against fire code. And I didn’t think the Race CEO would RSVP yes, but he did, which is a problem because I’ve invited a couple of former employees he fired for embezzling, and I can’t uninvite them because I want them to give some of the money they embezzled to the kids.”

“The stakes are high,” Gabe said, and not even sarcastically. It felt good to hear someone say that nonsarcastically, because it was true. My seating chart woes might sound silly and frivolous, but the goal of this gala was to make people donate money to help kids, and they wouldn’t do that if they were in a foul mood from sitting beside someone who’d stolen their money or their husband.

“They are high,” Vienna said, her voice tight. I hoped she didn’t think he was being sarcastic. Gabe always spoke in a kind of measured way, so it could be hard for people who didn’t know him well to tell. “But if anyone can do it, it’s our girl.”

“One hundred percent,” Gabe said.

Tears prickled the backs of my eyes. I cleared my throat. Something that I still wasn’t quite used to: people believing in me. “You guys.”

The timer dinged. “Quick,” Gabe said. “While she’s distracted by the happy tears, we eat all the sweet rolls.”

“You guys.” With them at my side, I could do anything.