Ah yes, that had gone well; I knew all I had to do was get my old friend Paulette on board, and she would do the rest. It wasn’t hard to sell since Gabriella really was exceptionally beautiful, but I was more interested in her beauty for my own selfish reasons.

Paulette, on the other hand, was looking for the new face of La Femme, so that worked out beautifully, more so than even I could’ve imagined. And I’d handled it in a way that Marion would never know that I was behind ...