Prologue
“I’ll need you to get me invitations to events where they will be.”
Mara took the leather portfolio from her boss. In his sharp, hard script he’d written the names of three women. She frowned at the names for a moment before smoothing out her expression and looking back at him. “These women are all royalty. You want invitations to royal engagements?”
Agustin Delgado raised an eyebrow at her. It was a silent you dare question me?
Mara sighed. No, of course not. A personal assistant to Mr. Agustin Delgado, CEO of Sosten, one of Europe’s largest and most sustainable infrastructure companies, did not question.
She enacted.
And enacting, even the impossible, was what had allowed Mara to climb the administrative ladder so effectively and land at the top. There was no assistant in the entire company who had a more prominent and important job than she did.
Sometimes she wondered if she would have made different choices if she’d known how being the assistant to such a powerful man would absorb her entire life.
But there was something in the work that was reward—even more than the very impressive salary she pulled these days, something she wouldn’t have even dreamed of as a young girl.
Other people in the company liked to say—complain—that it would take three people to replace her. At the very least.
To Mara’s way of thinking, this made her rather irreplaceable. And she guarded that certainty tighter than anything. Irreplaceable was almost as valuable as a full bank account. Money could always be made—especially by someone as resourceful as she was—but being needed was a rare feat indeed.
“Very well,” Mara said without Mr. Delgado having said anything. A look spoke volumes when it came from him. “It will require some travel, one would assume. How much of your current schedule are you willing to alter to attend an event?”
“Any of it.”
She was an expert at hiding her reactions to his demands, but she didn’t think she successfully masked the surprise on her face.
Mr. Delgado almost never rearranged business for pleasure.
He was at his best in a boardroom, not a ballroom—he’d said that to her on more than one occasion while telling her to refuse some social invitation or another.
But everything had been in upheaval this week. The news that Felipe Delgado had passed away in a fiery automobile crash in Paris—something that had sent the news cycle into a frenzy—hadn’t changed Mr. Delgado’s work schedule.
But the media uproar demanding time and commentary from the Delgado family was a new sort of pressure.
Felipe had been a household name. The polar opposite of his low-profile brother.
Where Agustin had dedicated himself to the family business and the family legacy in money and business deals, Felipe had gallivanted his way across Europe—dating the rich and famous, performing outrageous stunts, making friends with anyone and everyone.
He’d used their mother’s tenuous and old connections to royalty and their father’s money and influence to make a name for himself.
He’d graced influencers with his face on their feeds.
There’d been an engagement to one of the most famous pop singers in the world last year, and then an even bigger news cycle when it had ended two months later.
And now he was dead.
Mara had not known Felipe well, but it still struck her as sad that someone so full of life hadn’t lived past his reckless phase.
She studied his older brother now. Was this sudden interest in social engagements Mr. Delgado’s version of grief?
It was hard to believe, considering Agustin hadn’t even taken an hour off work since he’d learned of his brother’s death.
But everyone dealt with tragedy in different ways, Mara supposed.
She hesitated. Which was not normal for her, but nothing was normal at Sosten right now. And wouldn’t be until the specter of Felipe’s life and death dimmed a bit, and only time could make that happen.
“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but your mother expects you in a half hour,” Mara said gently. “The funeral…”
“I will be where I need to be,” he replied coolly. “I expect those engagements scheduled by the end of the day.”
Mara sighed. It was an impossible feat.
But she had been doing the impossible for years now.