Chapter 12
SEBASTIAN
By nine the next morning, I’ve already fielded three congratulatory calls, two emails, and one message from a city councilman’s office thanking us for a “beautiful and meaningful evening.” The one thing everyone agrees on is that it was our best gala to date.
I sit behind my desk with coffee cooling untouched near my hand and the gala recap open on my laptop.
The ballroom photos are already circulating through private group chats and society accounts.
The foundation board is thrilled. The hotel team is relieved.
The check total came in higher than projected.
Now that the event is over, only one thought keeps circling back. I have no more excuses to see Valentina on a regular basis.
We had weeks of meetings and walkthroughs to keep us tethered to each other. A hundred practical reasons to have Valentina in my office, in my ballroom, in my life. Now there’s an invoice coming, a few wrap-up emails, maybe one final debrief if I invent a reason for it. After that, nothing.
I catch myself thinking about asking Nico for another family dinner and hate myself for how obvious that would be. Nico notices everything where his sister is concerned.
So I do nothing, which somehow makes it worse.
Matteo walks into my office around ten thirty without knocking. He drops into one of the leather chairs across from my desk and glances at the gala photos still open on my screen.
“You look miserable for a man who just threw this company’s most successful gala ever.”
“I’m thrilled,” I deadpan.
“Obviously.” He rolls his eyes.
He picks up the second cup of coffee my assistant left on the side table for him and settles in.
“The board called twice,” I say. “The mayor’s wife sent flowers to the hotel. Half the city wants an invitation to next year’s event now that they’ve seen the photos. It was a success.”
“And?”
I lean back in my chair. “And nothing.”
He studies me for a second. “You’re annoyed that it’s over.”
My silence tells him everything he needs to know.
A slow grin spreads across his face. “So this is about a certain event planner.”
“Don’t.”
“I was going to pass along my congratulations,” he says with a shit-eating grin. “She did an excellent job.”
True enough. It also does nothing for my mood.
Matteo takes a sip of coffee. “You could just ask her out.”
“Absolutely not.” I sigh.
“Why not?”
“Nico would kill me.”
By lunchtime, the congratulatory noise hasn’t slowed.
One of our investors wants an introduction to Val for his wife’s anniversary party.
I give him her business email instead of her number and dislike the hollow feeling that follows.
Absurd. I know that. If anything, I should be pleased.
The event did exactly what a great event is supposed to do for someone in her line of work.
It raised her profile. It made people talk.
It turned one successful room into future contracts.
By end of day, Val sends a short, clean email with the final event recap, vendor reconciliation notes, and a boilerplate thank-you. As if our night together never happened.
I stare at the email longer than necessary, then send back a reply that’s equally professional. Because I’m not a child, and if distance is what she wants, I’m fully capable of giving it to her.
The next day, she sends the final invoice. I approve it immediately. Then I spend another ten minutes staring at the email chain like I’m going to find some hidden message inside her perfectly neutral phrasing if I read closely enough.
I don’t.
On the fourth day, I send her a question about a vendor I don’t even remotely care about. Her reply is brief and professional, and I half believe she had her assistant send it.
By the sixth day, I know with complete certainty she is avoiding me.
Valentina is too smart to be obvious about it. She isn’t outright ignoring my emails or refusing to answer questions or behaving in any way I could reasonably criticize. She’s simply keeping every interaction scrubbed clean of anything personal. Unmistakable. And I hate that it bothers me.
After a week, I’ve driven myself half out of my mind. I catch myself thinking about her at the wrong moments. In the elevator after a meeting. In the quiet between phone calls. At my own dining table.
I wouldn’t tolerate this behavior in anyone else. In myself, I dislike it even more. Which is why, when my phone rings just after midnight with Bellissimo’s security chief on the screen, all of that private irritation drops away fast.
“What happened?” I ask immediately.
“There’s been a shooting,” he says.
I’m already on my feet before he finishes the sentence. “Who’s hit?”
“No civilian injuries so far. One bouncer got clipped by glass when the shooter hit the back mirror. The guy got away before our people could get to him.”
I grab my keys off the desk in my home office and head for the door.
By the time I reach Bellissimo, the block is lit in red and blue.
Uniforms form a barricade at the front while guests huddle outside in expensive clothes, making the whole scene about themselves.
One girl is crying into her phone while her friend angles them both into better light.
A man in a dinner jacket is loudly insisting he knows the mayor.
That’s Los Angeles for you. Even panic is content.
One of my men meets me at the door and walks me through. Inside, the music is dead and the house lights are up. My staff looks pale. Furious.
The back bar took most of it. Bottles shattered across mirrored shelving, glass everywhere. One bullet lodged in the wall near a velvet banquette where, barely a week ago, I watched Valentina laugh at the bar before I crossed the floor to ask her to dance.
I push the thought away. Not the time. Not the place.
“What do we have?” I ask.
Matteo is already there, sleeves rolled up, assessing the damage. He looks up when I reach the bar.
“Witnesses are useless. Everybody ducked and ran then half of them were more interested in filming the aftermath than remembering what they saw.”
“Any details on the shooter?”
“All we’ve got is male, black cap, dark jacket.
From the footage, he came in through the east side and went out the rear service corridor before the second bouncer got eyes on him.
” Matteo gestures toward the broken mirrored display.
“Fired twice at the bar and once into the wall. And he made damn sure to keep his face off camera.”
“Are we thinking it was a message from Marchetti?” I ask.
“Maybe.” He exhales. “Are they that stupid, though?”
A uniformed detective starts toward me from the other side of the room before I can answer. I know before he opens his mouth that he’s going to be worthless. Sure enough, he gives me the bureaucratic version of we’ll do what we can, which means nothing.
When he leaves, Matteo and I make our way to the security room behind the club office.
Three screens are up, two different angles paused.
The first shows the east corridor, crowded and dark.
The second catches the shooter but only in fragments, showing details of his black cap, jacket, and roughly average height.
He comes in with purpose, disappears into the crowd, then reappears near the back bar moments before the shots.
His movements are too clean for anything but intent.
The third screen catches him leaving through the service hall, his shoulder turned from the camera and head down, gone in seconds.
“Got a plate on his vehicle?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Matteo says. “But we’ve got one grainy angle from the alley cam. Car waiting at the rear turnoff. Could be a driver, could be coincidence. I’m pulling traffic routes now.”
I realize, with a clarity that turns immediately to anger, exactly how distracted I’ve been.
Not enough to cause this, maybe. That would be vanity.
Men like Marchetti make their own choices whether I spend my week buried in work or fixated on Valentina Moretti’s polite emails like an idiot.
But enough that I let my attention drift when it should have been locked on our most recent security threat.
That black sedan has been taunting us for weeks, and now this.
My distraction is unacceptable. I stare at the paused image of the shooter and make a resolution.
Whatever happened with Valentina happened. She made her choice about what it meant, and she made it immediately. I’m the one who let myself get carried away. No more. Valentina goes back to being my best friend’s sister and nothing more.
“What do you need?” Matteo asks.
“I want all street footage from here to Santa Monica before sunrise. Names on every Marchetti runner who’s been near West Hollywood this week.
The rear alley route mapped and the car from the alley cam cleaned up if possible.
And the bouncer statements retaken by somebody with more patience than the LAPD seems capable of. ”
Matteo nods once.
“Done.”
“I’ll call Nico to double security at our other properties. And I want every dancer escorted to their cars for the rest of the weekend.”
I look back at the frozen frame of the man in the cap. This should not have happened. Not on my watch.
That’s the truth under everything else. While I was letting her get under my skin, somebody fired shots in one of my clubs and vanished. I won’t let that happen again.
I step away from the monitor and head back toward the main floor, where glass still glitters under the raised lights and uniforms mill around pretending they’re in control.
The club will reopen. The damage will be fixed. The guests will retell the story tomorrow over brunch and make themselves sound braver than they were. Publicly, this will become a contained incident at a high-profile venue. Unfortunate, but handled.
Privately, this requires a reset in my organization. A full reset in my focus, too. I need my men battle-ready in case the Marchettis decide to make their move, and I can’t afford to let any woman get in the way of that.