The midday sun streamed through Sophia's bedroom windows, casting prismatic rainbows across the walls as it filtered through her collection of Baccarat crystal paperweights. She lay sprawled across a custom-made divan upholstered in Fortuny fabric, her phone held aloft in one hand while the other absently twirled a lock of hair around a Cartier panther ring. The scent of tuberose from her Diptyque candles warred with the acrid tang of freshly printed stock reports littering the floor—reports she'd pretended to study for weeks.
The double doors burst open with enough force to rattle her collection of Art Deco perfume bottles. Alexander Sterling stood framed in the doorway, his usually impeccable Brioni suit rumpled, a sheen of sweat glistening at his temples. Behind him, Eleanor clutched an iPad like a talisman, her vermilion lipstick smudged at the corner—the only visible crack in her armor.
"Daron Group's commercial portfolio—" Alexander brandished a crumpled Financial Times like a war banner, the headline screaming REAL ESTATE TITAN COLLAPSES OWING $2.3B IN JUNK BONDS. "—it's gone. Gone. Their shares are trading at toilet paper valuations!"
Sophia didn't lower her phone. "Hmm," she murmured, squinting at her Candy Crush level. "Did you try turning it off and on again?"
Eleanor stepped around her husband, heels sinking into the plush Tibetan rug. "We liquidated our stake yesterday at 4:59 PM." Her manicured finger trembled slightly against the iPad's screen, pulling up Sterling Group's brokerage account. "Because of your market analysis."
Sophia finally glanced up, noting the way her mother's left eyelid twitched—a tell she'd catalogued at age twelve during the Great Boardroom Coup of 2013. "Oh, that." She rolled onto her stomach, the silk charmeuse of her La Perla chemise pooling like liquid mercury. "To be fair, my models predicted the crash two weeks earlier. Guess I'm slipping."
Alexander collapsed into a Louis XV bergère chair, his laughter tinged with hysteria. "Slipping? You've just netted us nine figures!" His gaze drifted to the whiteboard in the corner—still smeared with Sophia's two-month-old scribbles of BUY BTC and SHORT DARON circled in neon pink. "Christ, when did you become Warren Buffett in Balenciaga?"
"Warren wishes he had my shoe collection." Sophia stretched like a satisfied cat, the hem of her chemise riding up to reveal a thigh tattoo she'd gotten in Ibiza—Carpe Diem in Gothic script, which Eleanor pretended not to notice. "But if you must know…" She paused, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm a time traveler."
The room stilled.
Eleanor's Chanel No. 5 seemed to congeal in the air.
"From…?" Alexander ventured.
"3045." Sophia deadpanned, scrolling through Tinder profiles of oligarch heirs. "We ride dinosaur robots and pay for things with TikTok likes. Terribly dull."
Eleanor massaged her temples, the diamond eternity band on her finger catching the light. "Must you always—"
"What?" Sophia batted her lashes, the picture of wounded innocence. "You wanted a logical explanation for my 'uncanny market instincts.'" She air-quoted with her toes, each nail painted the exact crimson of a crashing stock arrow. "Time paradoxes are very logical. Ask Einstein."
Alexander opened his mouth, closed it, then reached for the decanter of 25-year Macallan on Sophia's side table. "When you said you were taking online courses…"
"I did get a Coursera certificate!" She rummaged through her Birkin, tossing a crumpled parchment at him. "See? Astrophysics for Poets. They taught us how to calculate planetary orbits and short-sell Saturn's rings."
Eleanor snatched the paper, her lips moving soundlessly as she read: "Congratulations! You've mastered the gravitational pull of narrative economics!"
The iPad slipped from her grasp, bouncing off the rug with a dull thud.
Silence pooled like spilled mercury until Sophia sighed. "Fine. The truth?" She sat up, crossing her legs in mock solemnity. "I bribed a Daron Group janitor to photograph their CFO's stress-induced rashes. Turns out hives shaped like bankruptcy filings make great tea leaves."
Alexander choked on his whisky.
Eleanor's stiletto stabbed through a stock report. "You're insufferable."
"But rich," Sophia purred, fluttering the Daron liquidation statement. "Which, in this family, is just another word for 'beloved.'"
The familiar dance might have continued—barbed quips wrapped in silk, laughter sharp enough to draw blood—had Eleanor not chosen that moment to drop her bombshell.
"Have you spoken to Yanchen?"
Sophia froze mid-eye-roll.
The air conditioning kicked on, ruffling the pages of The Wall Street Journal spread across her bed. Outside, a leaf blower droned like a dying wasp.
"Yanchen…" She tested the name, rolling each syllable like a rotten grape on her tongue. "Let me think. Tall? Smells like repressed ambition and Santal 33? Claims his family invented jade mining?"
Eleanor's smile could frost hell. "The Chen Group merger hinges on this alliance. You've postponed the engagement dinner six times."
Sophia sprang from the bed, silk whispering secrets as she paced. "Postponed? Au contraire. I've been conducting due diligence." She whirled, eyes blazing. "Did you know he uses emoji in SEC filings? Emoji! Last quarter's earnings report had a fucking praying hands gif!"
Alexander groaned. "Sophia, this isn't—"
"But the real issue…" She paused before her Venetian mirror, tilting her head to study her reflection like a Renaissance executioner admiring their axe. "…is his performance."
The decanter slipped from Alexander's grip, spraying Dalmore across raw silk.
Eleanor went statue-still. "Explain."
Sophia traced the mirror's gilded frame, her voice dropping to a mournful contralto. "At the Hamptons estate… I decided to test our compatibility." A shudder rippled through her shoulders. "Let's just say his… equipment…" She pinched thumb and forefinger, leaving a sliver of light between them. "…matched his moral compass."
Alexander made a sound like a stepped-on bagpipe.
"He's twenty-nine!" Eleanor's composure cracked, revealing raw maternal panic beneath. "There are treatments—specialists—"
"We tried everything." Sophia collapsed onto the divan, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead in a parody of Victorian vapors. "Blue pills. Red pills. A gold-plated contraption from Dubai that required its own visa." She met her mother's gaze, the very picture of noble suffering. "But as your daughter, I'm prepared to make this sacrifice."
Alexander had turned the color of spoiled pâté. "Sacri—"
"I'll marry him." Sophia's declaration rang through the room like a death knell. "Live as a corporate nun. Tend to my spreadsheet gardens." A single tear—courtesy of Visine and pure spite—trailed down her cheek. "Who needs physical intimacy when we'll have synergistic shareholder value?"
The ensuing chaos unfolded in slow motion:
Alexander's whisky tumbler arced through the air, scattering amber droplets that would later stain the rug into a Rorschach test of paternal despair.
Eleanor's clutch purse disgorged its contents—a lipstick rolled beneath the chaise, breath mints skittered into oblivion, and her emergency Xanax bounced off Sophia's discarded Manolo Blahniks.
Sophia watched, wide-eyed, as her parents listed starboard. Alexander crumpled first, knees buckling with a muffled thump against the Savonnerie carpet. Eleanor followed in tragic symmetry, her descent slowed only by instinctive grip on the divan's edge—a handprint later found embedded in the velvet like a fossilized scream.
For three glorious minutes, Sophia observed the tableau:
Her father's left leg twitched rhythmically, tapping out what might've been Morse code for Why God.
Her mother's whisper cut through the silence: "Premarital… testing?"
Sophia knelt, plucking a Xanax from the floor and tucking it into Eleanor's limp hand. "Think of the bright side! No risk of grandkids interrupting your hostile takeovers."
The door creaked open. Javier, the butler, took in the scene without blinking. "Shall I fetch the smelling salts, miss?"
"And a defibrillator," Sophia added cheerfully. "Oh, and call the Chens? Let them know the merger's off unless they buy Yanchen a functional—"
"Sophia!" Alexander's groan vibrated through the floorboards.
She blew them both a kiss, sashaying into the hall where her latest conquest—a Swiss hedge fund manager with a weakness for femmes fatales—waited by the elevator.
"Family emergency?" he asked, eyeing the chaos.
Sophia stepped inside, pressing the penthouse button with a blood-red nail. "Just another day at the office."
As the doors closed, her laughter echoed through the Sterling compound—bright, merciless, and utterly victorious.