Sometimes revenge is best served cold, in Paris, to your ex-husband’s young and beautiful paramour. In this Fall 2026 release, an older, wealthy woman is being controlled by revenge as she tries to get close to her ex-husband’s mistress. Dive into this psychological thriller, set to release this October, that shows the dark side of relationships and deception.

Last Looks by Cate Holahan

Cécile Duval has reached out to an up and coming American Stylist, Nina Berry, for a personal makeover. Cécile has just divorced and is ready for some life changes. Nina cannot refuse this wealthy French woman because it might just make her career. Nina arrives in Paris with her fiancé ready to work. She transforms Cécile’s closet, confidence, and even tries to set her up with an older, attractive man. What Nina doesn’t know is that Cécile already knows her and is extremely confident that she was her ex-husband’s mistress. Cécile doesn’t care about the makeover. She’s getting close to Nina because she wants revenge. Cécile can’t get too comfortable though because Nina has her secrets too.

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Chapter One

CÉCILE DUVAL

French women don’t take scalpels to their faces. Submitting a well-oiled visage to a surgeon’s knife is considered gauche at best, self-flagellation at worst. Chaque vie est un chef-d’oeuvre, as they say. Each life is a masterpiece. The vibrant colors of our creation will inevitably fade, becoming brittle and creasing, flaking away. Yet such weathering hardly detracts from a true work of art. Original Renoirs draw crowds, after all, not freshly painted reproductions. 

* 

I muse upon this bit of bullshit while wresting my hair into a ponytail, yanking the strands until the lines leaking from my eyes are sucked from my cheeks. Preventative Botox might have spared me the pain of tightening an elastic to fraying, but thirty-year-old me wholeheartedly believed female fictions about aging. I trusted that I’d be adored in my forties, admired into my fifties and beyond. My husband would view the rivulets beside my smile as evidence of a bountiful existence. Something to be celebrated.

The truth—conveniently omitted from French Women Don’t Get Facelifts and other self-help books applauding natural European ladies—is far less flattering to les femmes. While middle-aged Parisienne women congratulate themselves on being untouched, more than half their men are stepping out with younger women. The bourgeoisie here all know this statistic. I’ve attended enough Gallic dinners to catch quips about “the way guys are.” And I’ve been roped than one debate concerning the male’s biological directive to spread his seed in fertile ground, as if old balls were white-headed dandelions waiting on the wind to blow. 

One more wrench of my hair, and it’s time to confront my phone’s selfie cam for a frank assessment. My reflection disappoints, to say the least. Instead of a girlish Ariana Grande, I’m facing a later-career Madonna before the beauty filters and plastic surgeries. Attractive, sure. But a tad . . . severe? 

She is nothing of the sort, of course. Judging from her online photos, everything about this other woman is soft and supple. Her lips are a pouty bow. Her cheeks? The perfect padding to cradle a pert nose. I wasn’t surprised by her Instagram bio’s claim that she’d modeled before becoming a stylist. What was her quote? On the catwalks, fashion made me powerful. I want to give women the same feeling. 

More nonsense. Her thirties loomed, and unlike me, she’d read the tea leaves rather than simply placed their bags upon her eyes. A younger model would soon replace her, quite literally. She’d dodged that bullet by turning to a styling career that could keep her in the realm of the rich and connected long enough to snare a wealthy husband. Long enough to trap a few, in fact, then pluck the one with the plumpest bank account as her companion. 

If only I’d learned to hunt so well at her age. I am still learning . . .

And that will be my angle. 

That and money. 

I set my phone atop the fireplace mantel, propping it against a picture of me in my before times. Before the miscarriages. Before the hormone shots that did little besides impregnate me with gas. Before my ex-husband’s business trips to London and New York. 

A red bull’s-eye sits on the bottom of my screen. I lean forward to press it, subjecting myself to a horrifying magnification of my skin texture. This is why I no longer use makeup mirrors. 

I retreat three steps before again confronting the camera. “Nina, I found you. Well, your account. We know some of the same people—” 

Oops. Can’t say that. 

The phone’s HD is throwing me off. Also, this ’do isn’t working. It makes my hairline seem to recede. Her most recent photos flaunt a coif that frames her face perfectly, falling right at her clavicle, flirting with the nape of her neck in a style that’s both sexy and sophisticated. Its espresso color also pairs nicely with her complexion, which, honestly, isn’t that different from mine. Of course, she has a healthy glow, and I’ve been looking rather wan recently. Not completely her fault, though she’s certainly to blame.

With a wince, I pull off the hair tie and shake out my long locks. Several silvery threads peek from the dark and increasingly limp curtain that once complemented my bone structure but now draws it down. With luck, she’ll mistake my grays as highlights. I want her to find me attractive. Surely, she’d prefer to work with a good-looking woman whom she can post on her social media.

Again, I stop the video, treating myself to another zoomed-in image of my furrowed brow. I rub away the deeper folds while sifting through beauty filters. Amber glow? My skin looks jaundiced. Soft highlight? A white line divides my nose, pulling more attention to its lens-distorted size. Catfish?

What appears on screen is more rose-colored memory than real me. My face lacks a single expression line. The last time I was this wrinkle-free, I probably had acne. Nary a blemish mars this enhanced reflection. There are, however, longer lashes and a bit of added fullness to my upper lip, as if I’ve eaten something spicy. This is me on the best day I never had.

I press “Record.” “Hello, Nina. I follow you. You’re beautiful. Obviously, you’re beautiful.

And you know how to attract . . . Well, I mean you attract . . .”

The phone struggles to keep the filter on my moving face, stretching and distorting the image, turning my skin to taffy. I can’t send this. She’ll think I’m an AI-scam artist luring her with money only to skip out on the bill—or worse.

I do, in fact, plan worse. Though I can’t give her any reason to suspect that.

Perhaps my raw image is the best lure. The years have failed to erase all my je ne sais quoi. And at least she won’t doubt the need for her services. A tap of my screen ages me twenty years in a second. If comparison is the thief of joy, then the juxtaposition of one’s real self against a digitally perfected model is the bloody murder of it.

Bloody murder. Now, there’s a thought.

I hit “Record” a third time. “Bonjour, Miss Berry. I follow you online and need a stylist.”

A forced smile and some flattery round out my pitch. I name specific looks from her social media accounts to demonstrate that I’ve done my research and throw in her quote about helping women feel their best. I’m selling myself, I think, but not fully. Why work with a stranger three thousand miles away? How can little old me fulfill Nina’s self-described mission of making women feel powerful?

While I think of an answer, the phone’s green dot shines in my eyes. I stare at it, Gatsby on his dock dreaming of Daisy—that terrible, vapid bitch. Though she did run over her husband’s mistress and get away with it. I should be so lucky.

“My husband left.” I sigh, a soap opera character unburdening herself from a deep, dark secret. “I need a new look. A new life, really. And you’re clearly the woman for the task. So, name your price. It’s on him.”

And scene! My pitch is good. Enticing. Seemingly honest. In fact, everything I said is true, save for my last words.

The reality is that my ex has already paid plenty. What’s coming next is truly on her.

Preorder this fall must-read today!

Cate Holahan is the USA Today bestselling author of eight novels and coauthor of the #1 Audible bestseller Young Rich Widows and its sequel, Desperate Deadly Widows. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and optioned for television. She has also written two original movies for MarVista Entertainment: Deadly Estate and Midnight Hustle. In a former life, she was a journalist and TV producer. She has written for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, New Jersey’s The Record, The Boston Globe, MSN Money, and CNBC. A biracial Jamaican and Irish American writer, Cate is a member of Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, and the Authors Guild. She has a master of fine arts in dramatic writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a bachelor of arts from Princeton University. She lives in Tenafly, New Jersey, with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs, and spends time in Jamaica, where she’s also a citizen.