Chapter 6
Chapter Six
This Is My Hail Mary
Chiara
“Wine?” asks Arabella as I walk into the kitchen, my camera strapped to my body and carrying the last of the two images I had framed for the Natalia Hirsch Photography Exhibition later in the week.
My body aches like I’ve just done a gym workout, but two weeks straight of lugging a camera around New York and contorting my body into weird and wonderful angles to get the perfect shot will do that.
Sure, I’ve already won the coveted spot on Natalia’s team, but I really want the caliber of my work—and not my connections as so unhelpfully revealed in New York’s most-read blog—to speak for my talent and cement me as the worthy winner.
“Do you have a spare bottle?” I laugh.
“I have an entire wine fridge. We don’t even need to stop at one bottle each,” she says, gesturing towards the butler’s pantry where said wine fridge housing bottles of wine worth hundreds of dollars lives.
“Now you’re talking my language,” I say as I lean the frames against the wall and take the camera off my body to set it aside.
“How’s it all going?” asks Arabella as she goes to grab the bottle of red I hope will go some way to melting away the tension in my body. “I can’t wait to see your final selection of images. What did you decide to do with the treatment?”
“I’m feeling good about the shots. I decided to keep them all black and white, playing with contrast, leaving one element of color,” I tell her.
“I went with the idea of New York Through My Eyes. I wanted to show how everyone’s experience of life in New York is different.
From the street vendor in Chinatown to the banker in the Finance District.
Poor Marco has certainly been earning his keep as my ‘driver’,” I say using air quotes.
Arabella giggles. I figured out pretty quickly that Marco was probably more than just a driver, a fact Arabella confirmed when he dropped me to her house the day I arrived and sprung my change of accommodation plans on him.
To be honest, in a way it’s been a small comfort to have someone looking out for me with my best interest at heart—something I believed of Uncle Gino, but if what I think I overheard is correct, that could not be further from the truth.
Arabella appears in front of me with the glass of red I’m counting on to wash away all my fears and worries. If only for tonight.
“I’m so proud of you, Chiara,” she says handing it to me. “I know the risk you’re taking to gain control of your own life. You’re too fucking brilliant to let your family dictate your future.”
“Right back at you, girlfriend,” I say, lifting my glass to cheers her. “You are single-handedly organizing the hottest event on the New York social calendar. Are you ready to dazzle everyone with your brilliance?”
“Theoretically, everything has gone to plan from a production perspective. It’s more trying not to lose my cool at my entitled dickhead brothers who are trying to treat the guest list like some fucking frat party.
” She takes a big gulp of her wine. “They’re aware of what I have riding on this event, and it’s like they’re trying to do everything in their power to see me fail. ”
If anyone understands what it feels like to constantly be fighting for your independence under the domination of a powerful and controlling family, it’s Arabella.
Her family owns Belmont Media, one of New York’s most influential media empires.
Even though she holds a high-profile position, managing sponsorship and public relations for the company—and is brilliant at her job—her father and brothers don’t give her the respect she deserves.
Just like in my world, it’s a boys’ club.
Women are there to look pretty and play a part in a game they are never given a real shot to win.
This event is a chance for us both to smash through the glass ceiling.
It’s not just her who has a lot riding on it.
This exhibition, this opportunity to make a living from my photography, is my Hail Mary.
My freedom to grasp the future my parents died for is also at stake.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going to let that happen, Bella. I will tear their balls off with my bare hands if they even so much as look at you the wrong way that night.”
“Chiara! I would not subject you to that hell! That would mean you have to touch their junk.” She shudders. “I fear they would like that entirely too much.”
We burst into laughter again. The alternative is crying, and we’ve both shed our fair share of tears. It’s time for the tides to turn.
Arabella’s phone lights up with a call, MY BABY and a picture of the very handsome F1 superstar Luca Princi flashing on her screen. She presses the side to silence it and blacks out the screen.
And just like that, my thoughts swing back to another Princi, but I push them aside to quiz my friend about her own love life instead.
“Arabella Louise Belmont, please explain why you are screening calls from that delicious man,” I demand.
“It’s just better for us both if I keep him at arm’s length. I feel like I’m forever dragging him into the spotlight for the wrong reasons,” she says, worrying her bottom lip. “It also gets harder to say no to him every time he leaves for the race circuit and asks me to go with him.”
“So say yes. You can still do your job remotely. Delegate as much of the grunt work as you can to your team, and fly in for events when you need to. Voila. Problem solved,” I say.
“But isn’t that just me bending for another man?” she asks, her violet-blue eyes misty. “Luca is nothing like my father and brothers. I know he would give me the world…I’m just not sure I deserve his devotion after…” She trails off, then shakes her head and finishes the sentence. “Everything.”
I know they’ve been on-again, off-again since their senior year of college, but Arabella hasn’t been forthcoming with why they broke up.
I open my mouth to ask, and as if sensing my next question, she quickly continues.
“Besides, Mr. Princi isn’t my biggest fan, and my father is his client.
It’s all so messy, and the Princis don’t do messy. ”
“Oh, I know,” I say. “I had the fortunate pleasure of bumping into Raf the other night at Bella Donna. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
” I finish my wine and hold out my glass for a top-up.
“Although that might have something to do with me spilling coffee on his tie the first time I bumped into him, then accusing him of being a dud in bed the second time before asking Seb if he was single.”
“Oh my God, Chiara! You’re wild! Although I can tell you of the three brothers—and Marco who’s always with them—he’s the most serious. He’s in line to run their law firm, and unlike my incompetent asshole brothers, he probably has what it takes.”
“So he’s always wound up tighter than a nun’s vagina?”
Arabella chokes on her wine, and we both laugh until our sides hurt.
It feels good. Like I have a best friend again.
The type where you share inside jokes and talk about your latest crush all before dissolving into fits of laughter, just like this moment now.
After Mia disappeared, I didn’t trust female friendships.
I couldn’t shake the fear they would either use me to get closer to my very attractive cousins or betray me for their own gain.
But something tells me, if I can pull off my plans to make New York my home, I’ll find more than freedom; I’ll find the friendship I’ve been missing too.
“You and those damn one-liners!” she says swiping under eye, before regaining her composure. “Raf’s always been hard to read. I often get the impression he also prefers I keep my distance from Luca.”
“Hmm…I get the impression he likes to be in control—in all situations,” I say, waggling my eyebrows at her.
“Oh yes, I speak from experience when I say the need for control runs in the Princi DNA.” She smiles coyly. “You know, Raf will be at the exhibition. Maybe the third time’s a charm.”
Making a good impression is my primary goal for the night. My literal future depends on it.
“Or it could be a total dumpster fire,” I deadpan. “My track record with older men doesn’t bode well.”
The wounds left by my whirlwind relationship with Alessandro should be enough to deter me from trying to pursue anything with Raf.
Except my body refuses to listen to logic.
Desire hums through me at the mere mention of his name, and my imagination runs wild with all the ways we could use the push and pull simmering between us.
Against my better judgement, I plan to find out what it takes to get the attention of the elusive Mr. Raf Princi.
I’m not above a little hate fucking if that’s what it takes.