Ethan arrived eight minutes later, and he arrived the way he always arrived everywhere—as though the room had been designed specifically to receive him. He wore a charcoal suit that had been tailored to fit his shoulders with mathematical precision, a silk tie in a deep burgundy that picked up the color of his cufflinks, and shoes that caught the light from the overhead fixtures and threw it back in small bright sparks. His hair was perfect. It was always perfect. He had the kind of face that photographed well from every angle, the kind of jaw that suggested authority without effort, and he moved through the world in a way that suggested he had never once, not even in childhood, doubted that it was arranged for his benefit.
Behind him came Vanessa.
She was tall, carefully assembled, wearing a coat that Emily recognized from a boutique on the upper east side where the prices started at four figures. She carried a small designer bag in the crook of one arm and her phone in her other hand, and she was already looking at the screen when she entered the room, which was how Ethan’s girlfriend acknowledged spaces she considered beneath her attention—by not looking at them at all.