Chapter 498 | Princess Down

Chapter 498: 498 | Princess Down

The word sorry sounded like it had been extracted from Tessa with pliers.

Alexis’s vision went white at the edges. Not a faint. Not panic. Pure cognitive refusal, her whole nervous system rejecting the input. The Van Der Berg Black Card had a limit that existed only as a formality.

Her father could have bought this café and the three buildings on either side of it and still funded Harrison’s summer house renovation. The card did not decline. It had been active since she was fourteen and had survived purchases that would have triggered fraud alerts on any normal account.

Her mother had done this.

It landed like a body shot to the floating rib. Understood. Catherine Van Der Berg had not sent a follow-up text because Catherine Van Der Berg did not need to.

One call to the estate management office, the same office that ran the trust. Every card Alexis carried had been issued through it.

The Black Card.

The Amex.

The debit card on the checking account her father funded on the first of every month.

One pipeline. Her mother had turned the valve.

Alexis pulled two twenties from the zippered pocket of her bag, checked what was left in her wallet without letting her face move, and set the bills beside the declined Amex.

"Cash," she said. "Keep the rest."

Forty dollars for five coffees and a London Fog she hadn’t touched. It left thirty-three dollars in her wallet, beside a loyalty card from a boba shop in Koreatown that Kumiko had made her keep.

Ivy stood first. "I have a thing at three. Psych study group."

"You don’t take psych," Alexis said.

"New elective. Started this week." Ivy smiled and left. Her matcha was half full.

Bree and Sienna exchanged a look that held an entire conversation about risk assessment and social proximity. A library session. A nail appointment. They left together, and neither looked back from the door.

Charlotte stayed. Megan stayed because Charlotte stayed. Dylan kept scrolling with the energy of someone at a bus stop.

Charlotte reached across and covered Alexis’s hand with hers. Matte nude nails, unchipped. Dry, warm palm.

"Do you need anything?"

"I’m fine."

"You don’t look fine."

"I look exactly the way I always look, Charlotte."

"I could Venmo you for the drinks."

"I paid for the drinks."

"I know." Charlotte’s thumb moved once across her knuckles. "I’m saying I could."

Alexis understood. It was not an offer. It was a receipt for having offered, something Charlotte could mention later at a table like this one.

Charlotte studied her for a beat. Then she picked up her flat white, photographed it against the eucalyptus, and posted it to her story. Not Alexis. Not the table. Just the drink, angled so the booth behind it looked empty.

She tagged the café. She added a location sticker. Something cold slid down the inside of Alexis’s chest. Charlotte was already building the narrative, and the frame no longer needed her.

"I have to go too," Charlotte said. "Text me later?"

"Sure."

Charlotte and Megan left. Dylan followed thirty seconds later without saying goodbye. Filler, then. Alexis had suspected as much.

Alexis sat alone at the best table in Maison with an untouched London Fog and two dead cards. The eucalyptus smelled like a two-hundred-dollar-an-hour spa. The light fell on the champagne silk, and the silk looked perfect, and under it Jordan McKnight’s stolen henley pressed against her skin like a secret she could not afford to tell.

She drank the London Fog in four swallows. It was cold.

She did the inventory, because inventories were what you did when the house was on fire. Thirty-three dollars. A boba loyalty card with three stamps. A pair of pink cat slippers in the bottom of a Saint Laurent bag. A phone. A henley that wasn’t hers.

There was a kitchen in a converted factory where somebody would put eggs in front of her without asking. She could not walk into it like this. Not today, not as a girl with thirty-three dollars and a reason.

The lot behind Maison held twelve spots, all angled for the German and Italian cars that populated Newport like an invasive species. She had parked the Mercedes third from the entrance at one forty-five, nose out, because her father had taught her at fifteen that you always park nose out in case you need to leave fast. He had meant negotiations. She had applied it to every parking lot since.

The third spot was empty.

Her heels made a final click on the asphalt. The spot held a rectangle of oil stain and a white notice tucked under a decorative rock at the curb.

She picked it up. Her hands did not shake. She would not give the parking lot the satisfaction.

VEHICLE RECOVERY NOTICE in block capitals. A tow company logo. Small print: recovered per authorization of the title holder. Clipped to the bottom with a gold paperclip, a business card.

Heavy cream stock. Raised serif lettering. Her father’s estate management office in Newport Beach, a direct line to the managing partner, and under it, in her mother’s precise script, four words: Call when you’re ready.

Ready. As if this were a dress fitting and she was simply running late.

Six friends gone. Two cards dead. One car towed. Same Tuesday, same woman.

She pulled out her phone. The thread with MOTHER still ended on understood, gray and clean. Catherine did not need to send messages. Catherine sent tow trucks.

Alexis scrolled past her mother. Past Harrison, who had texted Monday asking if she felt better and whether Thursday still worked. Past Ivy, who had already posted a story from the café without her in it. Past Charlotte, who had posted the same drink to three platforms.

Jordan’s name. Saved with no emoji, because she refused to be the kind of girl who put hearts next to boys’ names. The last message was his, from the cliff: Tuesday at two, princess.

Her thumb went to Kumiko first. Kumiko would come in four minutes with a tote bag and cry in the parking lot. Then to Chloe. Chloe would come with a legal pad and be right about everything, kindly, which was worse.

She went back up to his name and stayed there.

She pressed call before she could change her mind.

Two rings.

"Princess." Warm, a little rough. Behind him, the thud of a heavy bag and Kyle’s distant laugh.

"Help me."

The pause was so short she almost missed it. The gym noise faded. He had walked away from whoever he was with.

"Where are you?"

"Maison. On Balboa. Behind the building."

"Are you hurt?"

"Not the kind with any blood."

"Stay there. Fifteen minutes."