Page 87 of Most Eligible Billionaire

I slide it over to her. “You do it.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” She starts opening it, carefully. She was never a rip-open-the-present type. “A box,” she teases, turning the box that was inside. “A really, really nice box of tag board. I wonder why he got you a box.”

“Stop it! Stop screwing around.”

She pulls up the lid, peers in. Her grin dissolves. She looks…stunned. Or is it a look of horror? For once I can’t read my little sister’s expression.

“What?” I ask.

“Oh my god.” And then, as if that wasn’t clear enough, “Oh. My. God!”

“What?”

“Wait. Close your eyes,” she commands.

I sigh and comply.

“Now open them.” I open my eyes.

My heart skips a beat.

There on the table between us stands a tiny, beautifully carved balsawood griffin. It’s a perfect replica Brave Protector Friend, the griffin that guards our favorite building. Our adopted friend and champion.

“He’s beautiful,” Carly says.

I pick it up and inspect it, turning it around and around, admiring how he captured the bold and grippy claws. The ornate detail of the wings.

“He got somebody to make our griffin friend.”

“He made it himself,” I say. “He got up there somehow and got some photos, and he carved it. This is all Henry—this vision. The passion of it. The way he knew.”

“You’re quite the expert.”

Yeah, I think sadly.

“There’s a card.” She slides a tiny blue envelope across the table.

I take it and open it.

I should’ve trusted you. Let me fight for us.

Twenty-Three

Vicky

I puton my favorite sweater—dark purple, so dark it’s almost black, with black obsidian buttons down the front, and a black pencil skirt and a few white Smuckers hairs, unfortunately. I pick them off one by one in the back of the cab to Locke Worldwide HQ with Smuckers in his pleather purse. I need to see Henry. Partly it’s to thank him for Brave Protector Friend. The note.

Mostly it’s to see him. I’ve listened to his voice mails. Read his texts. In different ways they echo the small note in the griffin box.

The cabbie pulls up. I make my way through the grand lobby and up to the executive floor. It’s unusually quiet. Henry isn’t in his office. I head over to the admin area and find April.

She stands. “Hey!” She comes over and scratches Smuckers’s little head. “We didn’t expect you guys.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Queens,” she says in a tone, like, where else would they be? “The Ten?”

“Is something going on?”

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