Chapter 7 #3
“I appreciate you coming,” I said. “I understand why you are here. But I need you to act like a person who belongs at a wedding venue.”
“I do belong at wedding venues. I have attended several.”
“As a guest?”
“As a potential problem.”
“That is not helping.”
His mouth shifted. “Fine. What do you need me to be?”
The question caught me. Voss men did not usually ask questions in my experience. They issued plans and waited to see whether I survived them.
“An assistant,” I said. “A quiet one. You are carrying samples. You are not scanning every door like someone is going to shoot the bride.”
“No promises about the doors.”
“Then at least carry the samples.”
He took the bag from my shoulder. It contained silk swatches, menus, lighting sketches, and an emergency sewing kit. Nico Voss, family enforcer, held it with the solemnity of a man transporting classified documents.
The site visit was for the Hartwell wedding, a three-hundred-person event planned before my life had detonated. The bride, June, was waiting in the ballroom with her mother and fiancé. She rushed toward me the moment she saw me.
“Elena, thank God.”
“Always a concerning way to be greeted. What happened?”
“The lighting team says they need to move the dance floor. My mother says the dance floor is the only thing she has approved. Eric says he does not care as long as no one makes him dance before midnight.”
Eric lifted a hand from beside the stage. “That was one private conversation.”
I smiled despite myself. “Then we have a problem with three solutions.”
For the next hour, I worked. I forgot to be afraid because I did not have time to be anything except useful.
I measured the sightline from the ceremony aisle to the windows, moved the band platform eighteen inches, convinced June’s mother that the lighting design would make the floral installation look more expensive rather than less.
By the time the issue was resolved, everyone was calmer.
Nico stood near the back wall with the sample bag. He had, to his credit, become nearly invisible.
Then I noticed the man by the bar.
He was not part of the hotel staff. He wore a gray suit without a name tag and held no clipboard. Nothing about him was openly wrong, except that he was watching the ballroom as though he knew exactly what people did when they thought they were unobserved.
My stomach tightened.
I walked toward Nico without changing my expression.
“Do you see the man near the bar?” I asked under my breath.
“Gray suit, bad tie, left hand in his pocket?”
“Yes.”
“I saw him when we came in.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“You were negotiating with a woman about uplighting. I thought the stakes were high enough.”
I almost turned on him. Then I saw that his eyes had gone flat.
“Is he D’Angelo?”
“Maybe. Do not look again.”
Too late. The man smiled at me.
It was not Vittorio. He was younger, clean-shaven, with the careful pleasantness of someone who had spent his life being underestimated. He raised his glass in a small salute, then walked toward us.
June’s mother was still talking about chair covers. I placed my hand lightly on her arm.
“Could you give me five minutes?” I asked. “I need to confirm something with the hotel.”
She frowned. “Now?”
“Now.”
Nico moved half a step closer. The man stopped at the edge of our conversation.
“Ms. Marchetti,” he said. “I was hoping to meet you.”
“You have an advantage. I do not know who you are.”
“Marco D’Angelo.”
Nico’s expression did not change. I felt the air leave the room anyway.
“Then we have met,” I said.
Marco laughed softly. “I am not my cousin.”
“That is good. I find men who need to clarify that usually are.”
June’s fiancé looked between us. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” I said immediately. “Mr. D’Angelo is leaving.”
Marco’s gaze stayed on me. “I came to offer advice. You should not let the Vosses turn you into a symbol. Symbols are useful until they become inconvenient.”
Nico set the sample bag down.
I touched his sleeve before he could move. It was not a dramatic gesture. It was simply the nearest thing I could do to remind him that this was my client’s ballroom, my professional space, my decision.
“Mr. D’Angelo,” I said, “you are speaking to a woman at work. You are not going to threaten me in front of people who hired me, and you are not going to make my job another stage for your family’s argument. Leave.”
His smile faded at the edges.
“I did not threaten you.”
“You did not need to. You wanted me to understand I could be found. I understood that yesterday.”
The words came out clearer than I felt.
Marco’s eyes flicked toward Nico. “Your new family has taught you confidence.”
“No,” I said. “They taught me the cost of pretending I do not have any.”
For one long second, I thought he might say something worse.
Then he smoothed his tie and gave a tiny nod. “Enjoy the wedding.”
He walked out through the ballroom doors.
Nico waited until the doors shut. “You should not have touched me.”
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“If someone is threatening you, do not put your hand on the person with the gun.”
“You did not have a gun.”
“You do not know that.”
“That is not what you meant.”
He looked almost offended that I could read him. “No. It is not.”
I picked up my folder. “I did not want you to hit him.”
“I was not going to hit him.”
“Then why are you annoyed?”
“Because he got close enough to speak to you.”
The bluntness of it stopped me.
Nico looked away first. “Damian is going to be worse about this.”
“I am not his responsibility.”
“You are now connected to his responsibility. He is not good at separating those things.”
I thought of Damian in the warehouse, his voice when he said he did not like not knowing where I was.
“I have noticed,” I said.
Nico lifted the sample bag again. “For what it is worth, you handled that well.”
“Thank you.”
“And you should call Damian before Marco calls someone else and gives them a version designed to make him angry.”
I looked at my phone.
The thought of telling Damian made my chest tighten. Not because I wanted to hide it. Because I could already imagine the way his silence would change. Doors closing. Men moving. The hotel becoming one more place I was not allowed to enter without a perimeter.
Still, I called.
He answered at once.
“Is something wrong?”
I looked through the ballroom windows at the street where Marco D’Angelo had disappeared.
“Yes,” I said. “But I handled it.”
There was a pause.
Then Damian said, very quietly, “Tell me what happened.”
So I did.
"I know."
"I did not marry you so you could decide which truths I am allowed to have."
He stepped back. The distance between us felt like loss before anything had begun.
"You are right," he said. "I will tell you. But not here."
I should have said no. I should have told him I was done with delayed honesty.
Instead I saw something in his face I had not seen before: not control, not anger, not calculation. Grief held tightly enough to become a kind of discipline.
"Tomorrow," I said.
"Tomorrow."
We walked out together. Halfway to the car, a sharp crack split the night.
For one terrible second, I thought it was a gunshot.
Damian moved before I understood it. His hand caught my waist, turning me behind the car door. Marcus was shouting into his radio. Nico appeared from nowhere, weapon drawn.
Another crack sounded.
A streetlight across the road went dark.
Then a third.
Someone was shooting out the lights.