The Price of Inheritance Read Online Free Page B

later, $12.5 million. I looked out at the sea of white hair, the bald spots, and the slightly hunched shoulders in yards of Madison Avenue tailoring, and got ready for my heart to explode. Olivier looked to the phones again but Michael’s bidder had backed off. Olivier scanned the room quickly and then declared to the former bidders, “Not yours, or yours, Michael, but here in the room at twelve million five hundred thousand dollars.” Olivier pointed again at the phones for one last second and declared, “Selling this time at twelve million five hundred thousand.”
    The gavel went down and Olivier repeated, with a flick of his pen scribbling the bidder number on the thick Christie’s embossed paper in front of him, “Hammer price of twelve million five hundred thousand.” The crowd clapped, the price flashed on the large screen to his left in several different currencies, and Olivier got ready for the next sale, making no indication that he, with a lot of help from me, had just completed the highest sale for a piece of American furniture ever.
    Nicole put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed as tightly as she could and we didn’t say a word, which was good because I didn’t know what to say. I was barely ­twenty-nine years old and professionally I would never top this moment. Everything I’d done to make this happen was suddenly worth it.
    I stood through the last lots with Nicole, unable to react, unable to do more than smile and watch Olivier do his job, until the last table sold and Nicole steered me out the door to the auction prep room, where I was greeted with dignified cheers, hugs from everyone in our department, and a handshake from Christie’s CEO, Dominick Swansea.
    â€œWe have to celebrate,” declared Nicole as we walked out of the room an hour later with our two American Furniture and Decorative Arts colleagues. It was just past 8 P.M. and I had never been happier. Not when I lost my virginity to the cutest sixteen-year-old in Newport, when I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, or when I’d been asked to do an appraisal on Antiques Roadshow . This was my moment. I had antihistamines coursing through my veins, burn victim makeup on my face, and beads of sweat evaporating on my neck, but none of that mattered now.
    â€œYou just changed the course of the entire auction world,” Nicole continued. “No one ever thought a piece of American furniture could hit the twelve and a half million mark, even the Nicholas Brown, but it just happened. And you helped make it happen. Everyone thinks you’re the best and you just proved them right. It’s time to raise a glass, or five, to your success.”
    It was? Of course it was. We walked outside, through Rockefeller Center, taking in the fresh night breeze. It was September in New York and the air was filled with the last traces of summer. I inhaled deeply, something I hadn’t done for six months, and felt like everything in my life was going right. Better than right, it was perfect. Sure, I was technically single but occasionally sleeping with Alex, my ex-boyfriend from boarding school who was only balding on his left side, and both my parents had actually called me by the wrong name last week, even though I’m an only child, but all that seemed completely irrelevant now. I’d get Alex some Rogaine and buy my parents a few bottles of ginkgo biloba. I, with a little help from a 250-year-old company, had just gotten someone to spend $12,500,000 on a desk.

CHAPTER 2
    I didn’t head home after celebrating that night. Instead, I went downtown to Alex’s apartment on Lafayette Street. He had one of those super-fancy elevators that drops you in the middle of the living room and his doorman knew me, so he didn’t have to come to the door to let me in. I walked into his place, took off my shoes, and let my cold feet touch the shaggy white rug that sat like a docile animal