Chapter Ten A Warning at the Gala
The invitation arrived on heavy cream cardstock, embossed with a crest Elena didn't recognize: the Calvetti family, hosting their annual charity gala at the Regency Hotel downtown. Dante's jaw tightened when he saw it on the hall table.
"We're not going," he said.
"Marco said everyone who's anyone in this city attends the Calvetti gala."
"Everyone who's anyone in this city also knows the Calvettis have wanted my territory since before my father died, and they will use any excuse — including my wife, freshly married and unfamiliar with our world — to embarrass me in front of two hundred witnesses.
" He set the invitation down like it had burned him. "We're not going."
But three days later, a call came from someone Dante evidently couldn't refuse — an alliance too fragile to risk offending — and Elena found herself in a midnight-blue gown, Dante's hand rigid at her back, walking into the Regency ballroom beneath a chandelier that threw fractured light across a room full of people who all seemed to know exactly who she was and precisely how she'd come to be there.
"Mrs. Moretti." A man detached himself from a knot of guests near the bar — silver-haired, handsome in a way that had gone slightly to seed, with eyes that reminded Elena uncomfortably of a snake assessing which way to strike. "Salvatore Calvetti. I don't believe we've had the pleasure."
"Mr. Calvetti." Elena kept her voice level, though her pulse had spiked the moment Dante's hand tightened, almost imperceptibly, against her spine.
"Such a sudden marriage." Salvatore's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"I heard your father's debts were rather...
significant. It must be such a relief to have them settled.
Tell me, my dear — do you know what happened to the last woman who tried to walk away from a Moretti?
" His gaze flicked, deliberate and cold, toward Dante.
"I only ask because I'd hate for history to repeat itself.
Families like ours — we do tend to remember things men like your husband would prefer forgotten. "
"I don't listen to rumors, Mr. Calvetti," Elena said, and was surprised, distantly, at how steady her own voice sounded even as her heart pounded. "Especially not from men who need to corner a bride at a party to feel powerful."
Something flickered in Salvatore's expression — surprise, quickly masked — and beside her, Elena felt rather than saw Dante's faint, private satisfaction.
"She has teeth," Salvatore said to Dante, as though Elena weren't standing there at all.
"She has more than that," Dante said, low and dangerous, stepping fully between his wife and the older man for the first time all evening. "Careful, Salvatore. You're standing very close to something I would burn this hotel down to protect."
Salvatore laughed, a thin, unpleasant sound, and inclined his head in something like a mocking bow before melting back into the crowd. Elena let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Who was the woman he mentioned?" she asked quietly, once they'd retreated to a quieter corner of the ballroom.
Dante's jaw was still tight, his eyes tracking Salvatore's retreating back like a man cataloguing a threat for later.
"A story the Calvettis like to tell to frighten people," he said.
"Nothing more. I'll explain it properly, someday, when I trust the telling won't cost me something I'm not ready to lose.
" His eyes found hers, and for a moment the mask slipped entirely.
"You handled him better than most men twice your age would have. "
"I was terrified."
"I know." His hand found hers, laced their fingers together beneath the cover of the crowd, an anchor rather than a claim this time. "You were terrified, and you still stood there and made him blink first. That's not nothing, Elena. That's not nothing at all."