Chapter 29
VIOLET
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m stepping into a place I don’t belong.”
I still can’t believe where I am. When Gianni had invited me to a charity gala at the Pierre last night, I’d at first thought he’d been joking.
“Let them talk,” he’d said, putting his hands on my hips and pulling me against him. “In fact, I’d be angry if they didn’t after showing off a woman like you.”
Just how the hell was I supposed to resist an invitation like that?
The space on the Pierre’s terrace is incredible. Crystal chandeliers hang from temporary rigging, crisp white tablecloths drape over massive tables, and a string quartet plays tasteful music in the corner. The men and women are dressed in finery whose cost I can’t even begin to guess.
I'm wearing a green velvet gown Gianni had delivered to the loft this morning in a garment bag with no label, which means it was either custom or the kind of expensive where they don’t even bother with a price tag.
It fits like it was cut for my body and my body alone. The neckline scoops low, but not too low, and the fabric drapes over my hips and bust in a way that makes my curves very apparent. I kind of like it.
Gianni smirks, amused. “You belong. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” He glances down at my dress, my body. “Though you might get a few stares of envy.”
I blush and glance down. I do look good. “I mean, the dress is nice.”
“It’s better than nice,” he corrects. “It’s sublime. In no small part due to the woman wearing it.”
I blush and get turned on all at once. Part of me hates how easily Gianni can affect me with just a few words. But I mostly love it.
Gianni is beside me in a black tuxedo that makes him look like both secret agent and CEO. His hand rests on the small of my back—warm, steady, publicly possessive in a way that makes people look twice.
We're a statement.
We make the rounds. Gianni introduces me to people whose names I'll forget and whose net worth I can't fathom—investors, board members, a state senator, the CEO of a shipping company who shakes my hand like he's appraising a property.
I smile. I shake hands. I make small talk about the charity and pretend the bodyguard standing near the elevator bank isn't there for me.
An hour in, the crowd shifts, and I see Theresa.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Gianni’s eyes narrow, which is never good.
Theresa crosses the terrace in a silver dress that fits her like mercury poured into a mold, her hair swept up, diamonds at her throat. She looks like a magazine cover, which she probably knows, and she's on the arm of a man I've never seen in person.
“Who’s that guy?” I ask.
“That guy is none other than David Marino.”
I recognize the name from meetings. He’s silver-haired and wearing a tuxedo that strains slightly across his broad shoulders. He's holding a champagne glass and surveying the room with the proprietary ease of a man who considers every space he enters his territory.
I understand enough of the background information to know this is not good.
The head of a rival family with one of the highest-ranking employees in Gianni’s empire?
The optics are a bomb, and every person in this room who understands the dynamics between Russo Industries and the Marino syndicate is watching and waiting for it to blow.
“Did you know they were, um, whatever they are?”
The anger in his eyes is the answer.
Marino and Theresa scan the room, spot us at the same time, and approach. Marino extends his hand to Gianni as he draws near, and the two men shake with the practiced civility of enemies who've just wordlessly agreed not to kill each other at a public outing.
“Gianni,” Marino says. He puts quite a bit of oomph into the handshake. “Good to see you, friend. Always forget how nice you clean up.”
“David.” Just the one word, the name, from Gianni. He’s not happy.
Theresa steps forward. "Gianni." She kisses his cheek—lingering, deliberate, in front of everyone. "You look well."
"Theresa." His voice is neutral. The emotional temperature of room-temperature water. "I see you've made a decision.”
"I have. David's offered me the Chief Operating Officer position at Marino Holdings.
Effective immediately." She says it with the bright, weaponized cheerfulness of a woman who's been rehearsing this moment in front of a mirror.
"I’m aware this is sudden, but David wanted an answer right away. And his offer was quite attractive.
“I’d imagine it’d have to be,” Gianni says. “For you to go behind my back like this.”
“Just business, Gianni. She’s a hell of a talent, and I had to get her. Simple as that,” Marino says.
Theresa purses her lips for a moment. “Either way, I wanted to tell you in person. Consider this my formal resignation.”
Gianni doesn't flinch. His expression remains composed, calm, the face of a man absorbing a blow he suspected was coming. He works his jaw, as if he’s pushing out whatever anger he feels.
"I wish you well," he says. "David will be lucky to have you."
Marino smiles. Broad, warm, fake as a three-dollar bill. "She's already proven invaluable."
I stand slightly behind Gianni's shoulder, watching the chess game, keeping my mouth shut because every instinct I have says this is not my arena. I'm the office manager in a borrowed dress. I'm the woman who's been in Gianni's life for a matter of weeks. I don't have a seat at this table.
But Theresa has never been interested in the table. She's interested in the man who sits at the head of it.
She looks me up and down with the slow, deliberate appraisal I've come to expect from her. Anger flashes on her face, and I realize the sight of Gianni and me together out in the open like this is having an effect on her that she wasn’t anticipating.
"That’s a lovely dress, Vi. Green velvet," she says. "Bold choice. Though I suppose when you've got that much—" she pauses, gesturing vaguely at my body "—real estate to work with, you take what you can get."
A few people nearby go quiet. Not everyone heard it, but enough did.
“Hey,” Marino says. “Let’s take it easy.”
I open my mouth. I have a response, but I don't get the chance to speak it.
"Theresa." Gianni's voice isn't loud. It doesn't need to be.
It cuts through the ambient noise of two hundred people and a string quartet with the precision of a scalpel laid against skin.
"I'm going to say this once, and I'm going to say it clearly, because I don't think you understood me the first time. "
The terrace is silent.
"The woman standing next to me," he says, "is the woman I'm building my life with.
She's the woman I come home to. The woman I protect.
" He pauses, letting each word land. "And if you ever—at any event, in any room, in any conversation I hear about secondhand—speak about her body, her appearance, or her place in my life with anything less than the respect she's owed, I'll make sure every door in this industry closes in your face, and you'll spend the rest of your career explaining to people why no one returns your calls. "
Theresa's face goes through three expressions in rapid succession—shock, humiliation, fury—before it settles into something blank and controlled. Marino's hand finds her elbow, and I can sense he wants to steer her away from there as quickly as possible.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Theresa narrows her eyes at me, as if to say this isn’t over by a long shot.
"Enjoy your evening," Gianni says as they depart.
Then he turns to me, his hand returning to the small of my back, and guides me toward the bar, through the crowd that parts for us like water around the prow of a ship.
I'm shaking. Not from fear. From the aftershock of hearing a man stand in front of two hundred people and claim me with the kind of certainty I've never been on the receiving end of.
The woman I'm building my life with.
He said that. In public. Out loud. About me.
"Are you alright?" he asks, his voice low, close to my ear.
"I—yes. I think so."
"You're trembling."
"That tends to happen when someone like you says things like that about someone like me."
He almost smiles. “I meant every word.”
We reach the bar. He orders me a water without asking—he's noticed I haven't been drinking tonight, though I don't think he's drawn any conclusions from it yet.
“Here.”
I take the glass, press it against my cheek, and try to slow my pulse.
That's when it hits. Not the trembling, not the adrenaline, not the emotional overwhelm of being publicly claimed by a man like him, but a wave of nausea that starts low in my stomach and rises through my chest like heat from a furnace. I press my hand to my abdomen and breathe through it.
“Violet,” he says. “Are you alright?”
I close my eyes and breathe and it passes. Something whispers in my head, a small cold calculation that starts in the back of my brain and works its way forward.
When was my last period? I count backward. One week. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Five weeks.
I set the water glass down very carefully on the bar.
Five weeks.
The nausea comes again.
I press my hand flat against my stomach in realization.
Oh no.