“Don’t look!” he cried. “I don’t want him to see we’re wasting breath talking about him.”

“Tell me when.”

He gripped my arm. “Okay. Over your left shoulder. Wait. Okay, now.”

I tried to be casual as I turned to stare across the crowded space. At first I barely recognized the greasy-haired, shrunken man in the corner, but then he grinned slyly and there was no doubt it was Enrico Baldacchio, Abraham’s most detested archrival in the small world that was bookbinding. Over the years, they had undermined each other’s reputations by spreading gossip and stealing lucrative commissions out from under each other.

“I’d heard you were working together again on some project for the Book Guild,” I said. “Was that just a vicious rumor?”

“No.” Abraham looked ready to spit nails. “The Book Guild begged me to do it and I tried, but had to cut him loose again. The man can’t be trusted. He’s a liar and a thief.”

I snuck another peek across the room. Baldacchio was talking animatedly to Ian McCullough, the Covington ’s head curator and an old college friend of my brother Austin-and my ex-fiancé. A woman stood at Ian’s side with her arm tucked into his. When she turned her head, I gasped and looked away.

“What is it, Punk?” Abraham asked.

“Minka LaBoeuf.”

I appreciated Abraham’s quick frown. “I’m surprised she’s here tonight.”

Abraham knew Minka LaBoeuf?

Oh yes, bookbinding was a small world. She had a lot of nerve showing up anywhere within two city blocks of me. I silently fumed. Of all the bitches in all the world…

Years ago, Minka and I had been grad school class-mates in the art and architecture department at Harvard. I didn’t know her well, but whenever our paths crossed, I would catch a weird vibe of anger or contempt-for me. It was disconcerting but I did my best to ignore her.

One day, after I was singled out for my superior gold-finishing work by a professor in a papermaking class, Minka walked over to my worktable to see my work, or so I thought. Instead, she’d concealed a skiving knife, a very sharp tool used for paring leather, with which she tried to spear my hand. She barely missed my radial artery as well as several vital nerves and muscles, and swore it was an accident, but I’d seen the calculation and derision in her shifty eyes.