I have kept that sentence of Teresa’s like a smooth stone in my pocket, and I take it out and turn it over on the days when I am tempted to feel foolish about the years I lost. I work for Cordelia Sinclair, not for this apartment. She had been with my family since before I could tie my own shoes.

She had watched me defy my father, marry a striving man against every warning, cut myself off from the people who loved me, and shrink year by year into someone quieter and smaller and more apologetic in my own home.

And she had never once said a word about any of it, because it was not her place — but she had also never once, in all those years, gotten confused about whom she served.

Spencer thought Teresa was part of the penthouse, a fixture that came with the marble and the view, staff to be inherited along with the square footage.