Which brings us back to the casino. My father bought this property. He wanted to build the most luxurious hotel in Paris. Violet and I have expanded on that idea, adding a nightclub, casino, and high-end retail shops. All told, it will be a $1.4 billion-euro property once complete.
We’re investing almost everything we have into Vivre. Which is fitting for a casino, I guess. We’re all-in. So it’s crucial that everything goes perfectly.
Which makes it less than ideal that we’re still arguing layout of the poker tables a month before our grand opening.
Violet takes a sip of her latte and sets it down again, grimacing.
“What?” Anton says.
“Nothing.”
“You made a face.”
“No I didn’t.”
He looks over at me for backup.
“There was definitely a face,” I agree.
“It’s fine,” Violet insists.
“Where did you get the latte from?” I ask Anton.
“Café de Flore,” he says.
“She only likes Café Jacques now.”
“Since when?”
“Since the gremlin.”
Violet is currently six months pregnant with Anton’s son, aka the gremlin. The gremlin is picky as fuck. He doesn’t like fish, cheese, pepper, bananas, or lattes from any place except Café Jacques.
“Sorry,” Violet says to Anton. “It just has a kind of metallic taste . . .”
“I can get you another one,” Anton says.
“No!” Violet says.
“I’ll get it,” I tell her, standing up. “I’m starving anyway. You guys figure out the tables while I’m gone—we have to decide today.”
It’s only ten o’clock in the morning and we’ve already been working on this for three hours. It’s gonna be a long day. I definitely need another coffee to keep me going.
I like the fresh air, too. We’re working out of a half-constructed office on the side of Vivre, which is dim and dusty, and generally full of the sounds of banging hammers and whirring saws, depending where the workers are concentrated inside the main building.
When I step outside, I’m hit with a gorgeous view of the Seine, and the Eiffel Tower right across the river. Dad knew what he was doing when he picked this spot. There isn’t a bad room in the place—the windows on the opposite side of the hotel look out over the Jardins du Trocadéro.
I walk along the river to Jacques, Violet’s favorite café. I wait in line, ordering drinks for Violet, Anton, and me, as well as several bacon and egg croissants.
There was a time when I would have bristled at the idea of picking up coffee for anybody. I would have seen it as “beneath me.” I had a pretty puffed-up sense of pride. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still have a temper—I haven’t turned into some kind of saint. But I can get a sandwich for my sister without being a dick about it.
I am, however, annoyed by the guy in front of me, who’s staring at the menu board like he’s never heard of coffee in his life.
“Do you guys make Frappuccinos?” he says to the cashier in English.
Fucking Christ, American tourists.
“Je suis désolé monsieur, je ne parle pas anglais,” the girl says rapidly.
I guarantee she absolutely does speak English, but she’s already decided this guy is too dumb for a conversation.
“What?” he says loudly, like maybe they both just need to turn up the volume.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Violet.
Hurry back if you can—the interior designer is here.
“Do you make crepes?” the guy is yelling, still in English. “I had some at Disneyworld once.”
By the time I get my order, I’m more than a little agitated. I pick up the three coffee cups, trying to juggle them along with the large paper sack containing the sandwiches. I back through the door, ready to hurry down Quai Branly back toward our building.
Right as I turn around, I run smack into some girl, so hard that I almost knock her backward off her feet. The force of the collision makes the coffee cups explode, the lids bursting off and hot milky coffee dousing both of us.
The girl shrieks as the front of her cream-colored blouse is drenched from neck to waist.
“What the fuck!” we both yell at the same time.
Weirdly, I yell it in French and she yells it in Russian.
That’s what makes me actually look at her.
The girl shakes off her wet, sticky hands. Her face is flushed with anger, her blue eyes wide and furious. It’s an expression I remember all too well. I haven’t bumped into a stranger at all.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shouts.
I’m so surprised to see Mila Drozdov standing in front of me that I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head.
“What are you doing here?”
It’s definitely the wrong thing to say. I know that as soon as it’s out of my mouth. Because I distinctly remember saying the exact same thing to her, in a similarly rude tone of voice, when I encountered her on a ski trip in Sochi.
That trip wasn’t exactly the high point of our relationship. Actually, it was the point where initial dislike turned to blatant hatred. When we returned to school, I tormented her mercilessly until the day we graduated.
I haven’t seen her since.
Recognizing me, Mila flushes all the redder and her blue eyes narrow in loathing.
“What am I doing here?” she says, spitting out each word. “Well Roman, I missed THIS so much,” she gestures to her soaked shirt, “that I followed you all the way to Paris.”
I know exactly what she’s referring to.
How I dumped hot cocoa all over her.
It was an asshole thing to do. I’m embarrassed of it, now.
The problem is, when I’m embarrassed, it makes me angry.
I know I should apologize. But I’m not the only one who was an asshole that day. She baited me into racing her, then humiliated me in front of all my friends. I know I was a jerk to her back then, but she had such a unique ability to get under my skin, to drive me insane . . .
And apparently, she hasn’t changed a bit.
Just the sight of her furious face and the sound of her voice—challenging and disdainful—is already raising my blood pressure all over again.
“Maybe you should watch where you’re going!” I shout back at her.
She stares at me, mouth open. Then she actually starts laughing. There’s no mirth in it—just pure mockery. It makes me want to grab her and strangle her.
I’m annoyed to see that she’s prettier than ever. She’s grown another inch or two since high school, compounded by the heels she’s wearing. And her face has leaned out a little, making her delicate features and full lips all the more apparent. Worst of all, the coffee has soaked through her thin silk blouse, making the material cling to her breasts, showing me that she’s developed in other ways, too . . .
“People get older, but they don’t grow up, do they?” she says to me.
That makes me angrier than ever. I HAVE changed. I’ve changed a lot. Not that she would ever see it. She’s just as stuck-up and judgmental as she was back then.
“Get fucked,” I snarl at her. “And stay out of my way.”
I push past her, deliberately letting my shoulder jostle her as I pass. Because I’m so pissed, I bump into her a little harder than I mean to. Unsteady on her heels, she hits the window of the café and almost falls over. I hear the sharp sound of tearing fabric—probably her tight pencil skirt ripping along the seam.