47
The lie about selling the diamond came out so easily, it almost felt like the truth. Elodie gulped her lemonade, wishing it had a shot of vodka in it.
While Celeste signed the contract, Gemma’s stare was like a dagger. Who was she to judge? She didn’t know the first thing about running a business. And no, selling a few things here and there on Instagram didn’t count. Elodie had been in the trenches for decades.
Pavlin & Co had overcome obstacles like world wars and cultural shifts that made expensive jewelry obsolete. But by the late 2000s, the industry was facing the biggest threat by far: technology. Lab-grown diamonds were becoming nearly undetectable from their natural, mined counterparts. And they sold for forty percent less. Worse, jewelry buyers who did want the real thing or even just traditional gold jewelry could now shop online and have pieces shipped anywhere. The metropolitan jewelry retail epicenters of the world were losing their hold on the market.
Maybe her father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather could have found some way to pull a rabbit out of a hat and turn things around. But all Elodie could do was think of a way to get a quick infusion of cash to pay the bills. In her business, the business of dreams, cutting back was not an option.
She thought long and hard about what she could do, coming up short at every turn. And then one day, during her obsessive reading of magazines and newspapers, she came across a WWD end-of-the-decade fashion retrospective that included a photo of Paulina at some red-carpet event. The caption made a big deal about the famous pink diamond ring on her finger.
The Electric Rose. After Paulina’s death, Alan had put it back in the vault. It was never spoken of, all but forgotten about. When her father died, his obituary made a brief mention of the stone. Still, it wasn’t on Elodie’s radar.
But then, the cash crunch. What was the point of having a treasure like that locked in a vault? It was no use to them hidden away.
“I think we should sell the Electric Rose,” she said to her mother.
“Oh, yes,” Constance said. “I wish your father had done that a long time ago.”
“Good,” Elodie said. “The business needs the money.”
“What? Oh, no no no. If we sell the ring, the money has to go into a trust for Gemma. Paulina intended for her to have it some day.”
Elodie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The ring belonged to the company—it was, at best, loaned to Paulina as a publicity stunt.
But there was no use trying to rationalize with her mother. And so she went around her.
The jewelry trade was a business of secrets. It was ingrained in the culture, both on the part of the sellers and the buyers. Still, the sale of a stone as significant as the Electric Rose would be nearly impossible to keep quiet. But there was another way to wring money from it aside from selling it outright.
For one whole year, she devoted most of her time to planning the 2010 holiday collection she called Pink Rapture: understated pink diamond pieces set in gold and platinum, none any more than two or three carats’ worth of stones. It was one of their most successful campaigns; the sales were pure profit because Pavlin & Co didn’t purchase any of the diamonds.
The collection was cut from a diamond they already owned: the Electric Rose.
Now, years later, she knew how this would look to Celeste: like a crime. She’d chopped up one of the jewelry world’s great treasures. And certainly, Gemma would have a fit and cause god knows what kind of trouble if she knew the truth.
It was one thing to sell it, to let someone else other than their spoiled sister enjoy its beauty. But to chop it up like a used car, selling it piece by piece?
She watched her sister pass the contract to Gemma, who then tossed it to the ground.
“You had no right to sell that ring,” she said.
Sloan Pierce slowly and with great deliberation stood from her chair and retrieved the papers from the ground.
“Celeste, Elodie—thank you for coming today. But I’m wondering if it might not be best for me and Gemma to have some time to talk in private?”
Gemma, alone with Sloan Pierce, felt that there was nothing left for them to discuss. She decided she wouldn’t say anything and would just let Sloan do the talking. And the first thing out of her mouth surprised her.
“I need your word—your professional word—that this is all confidential,” Sloan said.
Gemma hesitated. In her silence, Sloan summoned an assistant and asked for an iced tea.
“Okay,” Gemma said.
Sloan leaned forward. “The night of the Pavlin & Co centennial party, I was surprised to see that the Electric Rose wasn’t included in the exhibit.”
“I know. You mentioned that the day we met at City Bakery.”
“I’ve been making discreet inquiries about it ever since.”
Gemma‘s eyes widened. “And?”
“Do you know that only one percent of all pink diamonds are larger than ten carats?”
Gemma did know this. Her mother had told her everything about the Electric Rose. She nodded impatiently. “Well? What did you find?”
Sloan shook her head. “Nothing. The trail is cold.”
The assistant reappeared with a tall glass of iced tea and lemon. When she retreated, Gemma said, “How is that possible? It’s one of the most famous stones in the entire world. I get it—brokers deal with discretion. But this seems extreme.”
“Pieces do go underground. I’ve seen it happen many times. I have no doubt the Electric Rose will surface again but it could be decades.”
Decades?
“Can you keep looking?” Gemma said, hearing the desperation in her voice.
Sloan stirred the tea with a long spoon.
“I can’t keep putting time and resources into it. Especially if the auction isn’t happening.”
Well, that was direct.
“What are you suggesting?” Gemma asked.
“I’ll keep working my contacts and searching for this diamond if you sign this contract.”
Gemma looked at Sloan and knew she had nothing left to lose. Except one thing.
“I’ll sign on two conditions: You add a stipulation that the Electric Rose will not be included in the auction. Not even if you find it and the new owner is willing to sell.”
Sloan’s pale eyes narrowed.
“And I want a cut of the proceeds.” Gemma didn’t know how much money an auction would make, but she was pretty sure even a fraction of the money would be enough to help her scale up her business.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I need to work out the money part with legal. I think it can be arranged. But I need one more thing: photos of your mother wearing her famous jewels. For the catalogue and other auction promotion. Not photos from the ad campaigns of the 1990s, but candid, never-before-seen images. Do you have anything like that?”
Photos of her mother held a sacred space in Gemma’s emotional life. Paulina had died before the world went social media crazy—before the iPhone had even been invented. Interestingly, and somewhat disturbingly, a few Paulina Pavlin fan accounts had popped up on Instagram where people curated the paparazzi and ad photos from the era just before Gemma was born. Paulina loved to be photographed, but once she became a mother, she lost interest in the spotlight. There were only a few truly candid images of her mother, and they were all held in her grandmother’s photo albums boxed away in a storage space in New Jersey.
“I might,” Gemma said slowly. “I’d have to look.”
“Great! I’ll loop in Elodie about the photos and your cut of the proceeds.”
On the surface, all of this made sense. There was something in it for both of them: The auction would boost Sloan Pierce’s career. It would make Gemma some money. But as logical as it sounded, this wasn’t the way she wanted to fund her business. In fact, it was the opposite. But all she could think about, the one thing she couldn’t let go of, was the chance to see the Electric Rose again.
“I’m willing to give this a shot,” Gemma said. “So . . . to be continued?”
Sloan uncorked the champagne, the cork flying off in the direction of the pool. She poured a glass and handed it to Gemma.
She sipped it uneasily. She felt like she was dancing with the devil. She wondered what her mother would want her to do. She suspected she would tell her to keep dancing.