Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
RAFAEL
When she walked into that gathering tonight, every man in the room recalibrated.
I watched it happen. The subtle straightening of spines, the conversations that paused half a beat too long, the eyes that moved to her and stayed.
I've been bringing women to these functions for fifteen years and none of them produced that effect, that specific quality of attention that means a room has decided someone is worth watching.
I've been watching her all evening too, and I need to stop.
The gathering is at Conti's estate, forty minutes east, old money and older allegiances and the kind of room where every handshake is a transaction and every smile is a calculation. I know every face, every angle, every man who smiles with his lips and means something else entirely with his eyes.
Tonight, I'm watching Gia instead.
She's in the deep burgundy dress, long-sleeved, high-necked, fitted through the body and falling straight to the floor, the kind of dress that covers everything and somehow makes that worse.
She moves through the room with her chin up and her expression composed, her eyes tracking the room in slow deliberate sweeps, noting who stands closest to Conti, who waits to be approached rather than approaching, who checks the door when a new face enters. She's mapping it.
Ferretti approaches me first, as he always does. He’s been clawing at the edges of the Brotherhood for two years, trying to find a soft spot in our operations to sink his teeth into. Tonight, he smells an opportunity in the alliance.
"A masterstroke, Rafael," Ferretti says, stepping into my personal space with a smile that’s too wide and teeth that are too white. He offers a hand.
I take it, my grip just tight enough to remind him of the hierarchy. "Ferretti."
"The De Luca girl," he continues, his eyes wandering toward the bar. "A bit spirited for a bride, isn't she? I heard she gave Salvatore quite the performance in the chapel."
"She’s a De Luca," I say, my voice flat, a warning he’s too ambitious to heed. "They aren't known for being quiet."
"True. But she’s a Caruso now." He chuckles, a greasy sound that grates against my nerves. "I imagine you’ll have her silenced by morning. A woman like that... she needs a firm hand to remind her where the power lies."
I stop listening to his words. I watch Gia across the room.
She accepts a glass of wine from a passing waiter, her fingers closing around the stem with a delicate, bone-deep elegance.
She’s smart. Dangerously smart. She’s letting every man in this room think she’s decoration while she maps the exits.
I notice.
I think about those fingers. I think about her waist under that silk, how it would feel trapped under my hands. I want to find out if her skin is as soft as it looks, or if she’s made of the same steel as her words.
I want to press my thumb to the blue vein on the inside of her wrist and feel her pulse jump.
I want to work my way up from there, past the lace, past the poise.
I want to get my fist in that dark hair, pull her head back until she’s forced to look at me, and find out exactly what sound she makes when she breaks.
I want to know if her mouth would taste like the wine she’s sipping or the curses she’s holding back.
Ferretti says something.
"Mm," I say.
Get your fucking head on straight.
"Rafael? Are you listening?" Ferretti’s voice breaks through the haze.
I turn my head slowly toward him. The look I give him makes his smile falter, his hand dropping to his side as he takes a half-step back. He sees it then—the predator I’ve been keeping on a leash all day.
"The power," I say, my voice a low, lethal scrape, "is exactly where it’s always been, Ferretti. Don't let the suit fool you."
I leave him standing there, sweating in his expensive tuxedo, and start walking toward my wife.
She is standing near the edge of a conversation between two of Conti's men.
I stop.
She is not where I left her.
I find her across the room, standing near the window with a man I place in three seconds — Benedetto Ricci, forty-one, minor family, minor money, the kind of man who shows up at these things because nobody has told him not to yet.
He's leaning toward her. She's leaning back just slightly, wine glass at her lips, and she's saying something that makes him laugh.
She knows I’m watching because her eyes move over me for a second before deliberately turning back to the bastard.
All the calm, reasonable air in my body evaporates at the sight and the thing that replaces that reasonability is ugly and green.
She’s intentionally doing this just to spite me and I’m sure it’s because of the damned dress hugging her sinful body, which I should not be picturing naked.
I cross the room before I can stop myself.
Ricci sees me coming when I'm four feet away and he goes white in the face, what happens when men in this world realize they've been standing somewhere they shouldn't.
He takes a step back.
"Ricci," I say. My voice comes out the way it comes out when I'm not managing it — low, flat, a register that doesn't require volume to carry weight. "I don't believe we had an appointment."
He laughs, the laugh of a man who doesn't know if this is a joke. "Rafael, I was just—"
"I know what you were doing." I look at him until he stops talking. "Enjoy your evening."
He goes.
I turn to Gia.
She's watching me with a raised brow.
I step close. Close enough that this is private, close enough that nobody watching from across the room can read what I'm saying. "You want to tell me what that was?"
"Conversation," she smiles a sickly-sweet smile. "People have them."
"In my house, with my allies, at a function where every person in this room is watching how we operate." My voice stays level. It always stays level. "You don't get to fucking play games here, Gia. Not with my name attached to yours."
"You played games with my wardrobe this evening," she says, at the same quiet volume. "Consider us even, Rafael."
I look at her for a long moment. I don’t know if I’m thoroughly impressed, thoroughly turned on or thoroughly annoyed.
"If you ever do that again," I say, "I will remove every social privilege you currently have in this world before you finish the sentence. Am I clear?"
She holds my gaze. It’s obvious she wants to fight back but thinks better of it.
"Clear," she snaps.
"Good." I take the wine glass out of her hand, set it on a passing tray, and hand her a fresh one. "Smile. We're being watched."
She smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes. It doesn't need to.
I stay beside her.
Across the room, Marchetti arrives late because he always arrives late, it's a power move that stopped working a decade ago, but he hasn't figured that out yet.
He's sixty-three, built like a man who used to be dangerous and now just has money, and he makes his way around the room with the particular energy of someone who has already decided tonight is going to be about him.
He reaches us.
"Rafael." We shake hands. His eyes move immediately to Gia, sliding over her in a way that makes me want to break two of his fingers. "And this must be the new wife. De Luca's girl."
"Gia Caruso," I stare pointedly at the man.
No man is going to belittle my wife and be allowed it.
He looks at her like she's a piece of furniture that's been moved into the wrong corner. "De Luca's girl, the Ghost Heiress" he repeats, to me, like she isn't standing right there. "Salvatore finally found a use for her then. Couldn't do much with the first one."
The room doesn't go quiet. Nobody else hears it. Just the three of us in our small corner and Gia's expression, which doesn't change, which is the thing that gets me. She doesn't flinch.
She holds her wine glass and looks at Marchetti with a flatness that says she has been underestimated by men like him her entire life and stopped finding it surprising a long time ago.
I look at Marchetti.
"Careful," I say.
Something moves through his face. Men who've been in this world long enough know what that word means when it comes from me. They know what follows it if they don't adjust.
He adjusts.
"A pleasure," he says to Gia, performing a smile, and moves on.
I don't watch him go. I watch her. She takes a sip of wine and her hand is completely steady.
Good girl, I think, and I mean it differently than I've meant anything today.
"You didn't have to do that," she says quietly.
"I know," I say.
She looks at me then. Two full seconds, and then away again.
We move through the evening. I introduce her to Conti, who is gracious because Conti is always gracious, and to the Valenti brothers, who are polite because I'm standing next to her.
I watch her calibrate to each new person, adjusting by degrees, a different register for Conti than for the Valentis, reading each one before she's finished shaking their hand.
Then there's Greco.
He arrives in the second half of the evening, younger than most men here, recently elevated after his father's death, still working out where he fits. I've watched him in three gatherings now. The pattern is the same each time: he finds something he wants and he stares at it.
Tonight he finds Gia.
Not overt. Not stupid. A sustained attention from across the room, his gaze tracking her when she moves and settling on her when she's still. He hasn't approached. He's just watching.
I set down my glass.
Before I move, Fontana gets there.
He's been hovering at the edge of Conti's inner circle all evening, sixty years old, the specific breed of man who measures his own importance by finding cracks in other people's.
He stops beside Conti's wife, close enough to join the conversation, and his eyes move over me across the room with the assessing look of a man who has decided to test something.