Chapter 5

Derek's face did something that Cora had never seen it do. It got small. The confidence that had carried him through the past hour — through the coins, the performance, the pointed finger across the showroom floor — folded up somewhere behind his eyes, and what was left was a man standing in a very expensive room with no idea how to proceed. He looked at the fob in Cora's hand, black metal catching the light, and his mouth worked silently.

"That's not possible," he said. But his voice cracked on the word *possible*, and he knew it, and Priya heard it, and Arman heard it, and the two employees at the far desk heard it.

Priya stepped forward. She was wearing her emerald wrap dress like armor, her high ponytail swaying as she moved, and her polished smile had been replaced by a focused, calculating expression. She looked at the fob, then at Cora, then at Derek, and Cora watched her doing the math in real time.

"Derek," Priya said carefully, "who is this woman exactly?"

"She's nobody," Derek said. "She's — we lived together, I told you, she was a barista, she — " He stopped, because the story he had been telling Priya for weeks — the ex-girlfriend who was "just a barista," who "didn't have any ambition," who he had "dodged a bullet" with — was unraveling in front of him, and he could see Priya's face as she caught the loose threads.

"She's not a barista," Priya said. It was not a question.

Derek said nothing.

"Cora Weiss," Cora said, and she held the fob up so Priya could see it clearly. "Weiss Automotive Group. My grandfather founded it in 1972 with a single used-car lot and a handshake. My father expanded it to four showrooms, a financing arm, and a shipping logistics company. I grew up in this business. I drove to school in a car my grandfather bought at a dealership auction, and I parked it in a garage that I own."

She paused, looking at Derek. "I hid it. All of it. I told you I was a barista because I wanted to find out — " She stopped, and the stillness inside her wavered, just for a second. "Because I wanted to find out if anyone could love me for who I was, not what I was worth. And you told me I was too careful with money, too plain with my ambitions, too quiet to be exciting. You made me feel small, Derek. And I believed you. For a while."