Forty-four
Chiara
For the last two weeks, my mother has tried to fold herself back into my life, as if she never left it.
Dinners overlooking the water. Coffee waiting for me when I wake up.
Questions about my childhood she should already know the answers to.
She fills the silence with attention, gifts, stories about European trips and vacations she’s taken with her husband, and the life she built after she disappeared from mine.
And around all of it, Jim has eyes on us everywhere. Cameras covering the driveway. We have men outside and inside while my mother lowers her voice every time my father’s name comes up.
I spent years thinking she was dead.
She wasn’t. She just survived it better than most people do.
It was hard to say goodbye to her this morning, but it won’t be forever. I need to find myself, and it starts with Las Vegas.
The car pulls to the front drive outside the Bellagio Hotel, the doors opening and closing in steady rhythm as people move in and out.
Las Vegas hums behind it—traffic, neon, noise—but the entry filters it down to something tighter, controlled by scanners and staff who don’t look up unless they need to stop you.
My detail follows me as I step out, the air cooler than Malibu, dry enough to catch in the back of my throat.
The doorman opens the door. “Hi. Welcome to the Bellagio.”
“Can you tell me where to go for the International GEM Show?”
He points us in the direction of the convention area, and with each step I take, my heart beats faster.
I hope I’m doing the right thing.
I walk up to the registration desk. “Hello. I think I’m registered.”
Her eyes lift, sharp, scanning my face. Her chin tips toward the kiosks without breaking the line she’s holding.
I give her my name, and she clicks on her computer. “And your boyfriends will need to register to get in too.” She then winks at me.
I chuckle. “Thank you.”
After getting our badges, she hands me a map, and I quickly find where Luster is located.
The convention hall opens wide the moment I clear the entry, light spilling across carpeted floors and glass cases that run in long, deliberate rows.
The scale hits first—towering booths, branded walls, security posted at every corner—and then the detail follows, each display set to pull the eye exactly where it’s meant to go.
Names anchor the space. Olivier holds a full corner in white and gold, staff moving in quiet precision as buyers lean in close. I notice Ellory, busy talking to someone who looks important, so I don’t interrupt. I’ll find her later.
Farther down, Tiffany builds height with suspended lighting and mirrored panels, every surface reflecting money back at itself.
I move into the flow without slowing, letting the current take me just far enough to read it before I start cutting across it. Staff watch for hesitation, not movement. Buyers pause. I don’t.
A cluster ahead draws a tighter circle than the rest. I shift direction and step into the edge of it, the display coming into view in clean lines—bridal, but not soft. The settings are minimal, the stones doing the work, each one cut to catch light without giving anything else away.
“This is our new collection,” a woman says, stepping in beside me with a tablet held low against her palm. She turns it just enough to show the name—Amal—then angles her body to keep the space from closing behind me. “Lab-grown, but not entry level.”
I reach toward the glass, stopping just short of contact, the center stone pulling my eye.
“It doesn’t look different,” I say, shifting my position to catch the light at a sharper angle.
“It really isn’t. They’re all marked, but the chemistry is the same.” She taps once on the tablet, bringing up specs without pushing them at me. “These look different because we cut to maximize depth, not size. Most people expect the gems from a lab to look different.”
“They expect it to look cheaper,” I answer, tracking the line of the setting again.
“And they’re not.” She gives a small nod, watching my focus instead of my face. “Most people aren’t the audience for this.”
She points to a wedding dress where the bodice is all diamonds. “This is a Vera Wang.”
My eyes grow large. “Are all of those your diamonds?”
She nods. “Yes. It was her Fashion Week finale for her fall show, and she had just under fifty dresses ordered.”
“I’m not buying.” I step back from the glass.
“You stopped.” She tilts her head slightly, holding the space she’s built. “That’s the point.”
“If I ever get married, I’ll stop by your store in Union Square.”
“You’re from San Francisco?”
“Chicago originally, but I call San Francisco home these days.” I look across the colors of all the gems she is displaying. It’s incredible. “I always love your displays.”
“Those are my favorite.” She lights up and hands me her card. “Thank you.” I look down at the card as I move back into the crowd and notice her name is Aryanna Karimi. Someone else has grabbed her attention, and I walk on.
Then I see them.
Luster. The name sits against dark green velvet stretched across the back wall of the display, understated compared to the booths surrounding it. They don’t need oversized signage or suspended lighting fighting for attention. The jewelry does that on its own.
People slow as they approach the cases, their movement changing the closer they get. Conversations lower. Buyers stop pretending they’re only passing through.
I step into the edge of the booth and immediately recognize the design language threaded through the collection.
Emeralds dominate nearly every piece, but nothing feels repetitive.
One necklace centers on a rough diamond left intentionally uneven, the natural shape framed by sharp lines of Colombian emeralds and yellow gold.
Another uses graduated stones that deepen in color toward the center, pulling the eye exactly where the setting wants it to land.
I spent weeks reviewing inventory reports and sourcing costs tied to the emerald acquisitions, but seeing the finished collection in person changes the scale of it.
This isn’t excess for the sake of showing off.
It’s positioning. Luster didn’t buy up the emerald market to compete with the other houses here.
They bought it to separate themselves from them.
A line forms near the center display, guests moving forward a few at a time while security keeps the flow controlled around the case. I follow it until the statement necklace finally comes into view beneath the lights.
It steals the air from my lungs.
The center piece Dante showed us at dinner is complete.
Rows of Colombian emeralds curve across yellow gold, the stones growing larger toward the center until a pear-shaped drop hangs low against a halo of diamonds.
Smaller rectangular emeralds framed in pavé connect each suspended section, allowing the necklace to move almost like fabric every time the light shifts across it.
The stones aren’t perfectly matched. Some carry darker green tones while others lean softer, touched with blue beneath the surface. A few inclusions catch under the display lighting, subtle silk trapped inside the natural stone. These are not lab grown, and they’re stunning despite their faults.
And somehow that makes it feel even more expensive, less like modern jewelry and more like something lifted out of a royal vault and placed behind glass for the rest of us to stare at.
I lift my gaze from the necklace and find all four Marino brothers positioned around the display, each one dressed like they belong inside the kind of money surrounding this room.
Matteo is speaking to someone near the corner case, one hand loose in his pocket while Luca watches the traffic moving through the aisle beside the booth.
Dante stands farther back with a buyer and two security men nearby, calm enough that people keep adjusting themselves around him without realizing they’re doing it.
And then I finally spot Ciro.
He’s angled toward a man speaking beside him, his attention fixed where it should be, one hand resting against the edge of the display while the other man gestures toward a folder opened between them.
I take one step closer.
His focus breaks.
Small enough most people wouldn’t notice it. The man beside him keeps talking, still pointing at whatever sits on the page, but Ciro’s eyes lift before I even fully clear the edge of the crowd.
Straight to me.
The man beside him finally notices the shift and stops talking mid-sentence, turning slightly to follow Ciro’s line of sight.
Matteo looks over next.
Then Luca.
For half a second, the entire booth feels aware of me standing there.
Ciro doesn’t move immediately. Then man he was talking to leaves, Ciro’s hand remains against the glass, his thumb stops tracing the edge of the display as he stares at me.
“You’re here,” he says.
“I wanted to see you.” I keep my hand where it is.
His eyes drop to it and then lift.
“Is everything okay with your mom?”
“Yes.” I shift my weight forward and look around. “I was hoping we could talk a minute.”
“You said you were staying in Los Angeles with your mother.” He closes the distance without committing. “Is everything okay? Did Massimo come back?”
I shake my head. “I, um—”
His attention flicks to my shoulder and then back. “You were supposed to be safe.”
“I was.” I look over my shoulder. “Jim gave me a good team.”
“What brings you to Las Vegas?” He smooths his hand over the display, resetting it.
“I wish you would have told me where she was.” I cut over him, stepping closer again.
His eyes sharpen. “It was a mistake.”
“We could have figured out a plan together.” I place my hand back on the glass, directly over his.
He doesn’t move it.
The contact sits there, controlled, deliberate.
“I did what I thought was best.” His fingers tense under mine, not pulling away.
“You decided for me.” I press just enough to hold position.
“I kept you out of a trap.” His thumb moves across my hand.
“Which I walked into anyway.” I hold his gaze across the inches separating us. “And I came back.”
“What does that mean?” he asks quietly as he steps closer.
The convention floor keeps moving around us, conversations blending into the low hum of the room. My fingers catch the front of his jacket to steady myself just as his other hand slides along my jaw, holding me there a second before his mouth meets mine.
The kiss steals the breath from my lungs.
For two weeks, every conversation with my mother somehow circled back to him. The things he withheld. The choices he made for me. The danger he tried to keep me out of. I came to Las Vegas planning to fight with him again if I had to.
Instead, I melt against him the second he kisses me back.
His hand tightens at my waist as the kiss deepens, pulling me closer until the edge of the display presses lightly into my hip.
Somewhere around us people continue talking and moving through the convention floor, but the noise fades under the heat of his mouth and the way he holds me like letting go would require effort.
“Get a room,” Matteo says beside us.
Ciro pulls back slowly, his forehead nearly brushing mine before he looks down at me again. Lipstick marks the corner of his mouth now, breaking through the polished control he walked into the room wearing.
I lift my hand and rub at the stain with my thumb.
“I have to work the show,” he says, his voice rougher than before. “Can we meet later?”
“I’d like that.”