7. Ursula
— ? —
Ursula
The gala is still spinning around us, a kaleidoscope of silk and champagne and barely concealed curiosity, when I see it coming.
A young waitress, barely twenty if I had to guess, is navigating through the crowd with a tray of red wine glasses.
She’s moving carefully, the way new staff always do, hyper-aware of every elbow and sudden turn.
Her path is taking her directly toward me, and there’s nothing unusual about that. Waitstaff circulate. That’s their job.
What’s unusual is Renata, positioned fifteen feet away, watching with a smile she’s not bothering to hide.
I know that smile. I’ve been seeing it for twenty years, though I never understood what it meant until recently. It’s the smile of a woman who’s been patient for a very long time and is finally getting what she wants.
The waitress trips on nothing.
Her ankle turns, her tray tips, and red wine cascades down the front of my red gown like a waterfall of blood. The gasp from the crowd is audible. The whole room turning at once to witness the ice queen’s humiliation.
The wine is cold and sticky and I can feel it soaking through to my skin, ruining thousands of dollars’ worth of silk, and Renata is already pulling out her phone to capture the moment.
This was planned. The timing, the angle, the specific target.
Everything calculated to make me look like a fool in front of everyone who matters.
The waitress is crying.
That’s the part that cuts through my shock, that makes me focus on something other than the ruin of my dress and the whispers already spreading through the room.
The girl is standing there with an empty tray and tears streaming down her face, stammering apologies, shaking so hard she looks like she might collapse.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened, I’m going to be fired, I’m so sorry...”
I catch her hands before she can flee.
“What’s your name?”
She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which, to be fair, I might have. The old Ursula would have frozen her with a look, demanded to speak to a manager, done exactly what Renata is expecting: made a scene, confirmed every whisper about the cold bitch who deserved to be cheated on.
But the old Ursula died on a boat two weeks ago.
“M-Mia, ma’am.” The girl’s voice is barely a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. My ankle just... I swear I wasn’t clumsy, something tripped me, I don’t...”
“Mia.” I keep my voice soft. Gentle. The way my mother used to speak to me when I was small and scared and convinced I’d ruined everything. “It’s just a dress. It’s just wine. Are you hurt?”
“What?”
“Your hands are shaking. Did you twist your ankle when you fell?”
She stares at me. The crowd stares at me. Even Renata’s smile falters, just slightly, because this isn’t the script. This isn’t how the ice queen is supposed to react.
“I’m... I’m fine, ma’am. But your dress...”
“I never liked this dress anyway.” I smile at her, and I mean it, I actually mean it, because tonight was never about the dress. “It’s just fabric. It already did its job.”
A shocked laugh escapes her, quickly stifled. Some of the terror drains from her face.
“Go get yourself some water,” I tell her. “Take a minute. I’ll handle the rest.”
“You’re not going to... you won’t...”
“I’m not going to have you fired. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I squeeze her hands once, lightly, and let go. “Go on. It’s alright.”
She goes, still shaky but no longer crying. I watch her disappear into the crowd and I feel the room recalibrating around me, the whispers shifting in tone.
“...such grace under pressure...”
“...did you see how she handled that...”
“...the way she treated that poor girl...”
“...Renata was just standing there smirking, did you notice...”
Renata’s smile is gone now. In its place is something hard and frustrated. Her carefully laid trap has backfired, and it shows on her face. She puts her phone away without taking a picture. What would she capture? The ice queen being kind? That doesn’t fit the narrative she’s been building.
“You continue to astonish me.”
Matteo is at my side, a napkin in his hand, but he doesn’t offer it. He just stands there looking at me like I’ve done something remarkable, when all I did was refuse to be cruel to a scared young woman.
“It was a cheap trick.” I look down at my ruined dress. The wine has spread across the entire bodice, dripping down into the skirt, a darker stain bleeding through the red. “I don’t punish the weapon for the hand that wields it.”
“Most people would have screamed.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No.” His voice drops, goes rough. “You’re not.”
He’s looking at me the way he looked at me in his office, when I was standing there in nothing but his shirt, when the air between us went thick and charged.
But this is worse. This is a ballroom full of people, and Bennett is somewhere watching, and Renata is watching, and I should care about any of that but I don’t.
I don’t care about anything except the way Matteo is looking at me right now.
“You have wine on your neck.” He steps closer, close enough that I can smell sandalwood and sea salt, close enough that his breath ghosts across my skin. “Right here.”
His finger traces a line from my collarbone to just below my ear. I shiver. I can’t help it.
“I should find a bathroom,” I manage. “Clean up.”
“You should.”
Neither of us moves.
“Matteo...”
“I’m going to do something,” he says, very quietly, “that I’ve been wanting to do for longer than I will ever admit. If you want me to stop, say so now.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. My voice is trapped somewhere in my chest and my heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
He leans in.
His tongue traces the line of wine from my collarbone to the corner of my jaw, slow and deliberate and thorough. In front of everyone. In front of Bennett. In front of Renata. In front of a ballroom of Manhattan’s most influential people.
The room goes completely silent.
He pulls back, just slightly, his lips brushing my ear when he speaks. “Much better.”
My head spins. I can’t think straight. My nipples have gone tight under my ruined dress and there is a pull low in my belly, a clench, a wet insistent throb that has no business showing up at a charity gala.
I press my thighs together and it does nothing except remind me how empty I feel.
My skin is on fire where his mouth touched it, and I’m suddenly aware of every eye in the room fixed on us, and I should be embarrassed, should be mortified, should be thinking about how this will play in the society pages tomorrow.
By rights I should hate that he did that to me in public.
I have stopped, somewhere in the last two weeks, being able to convincingly lie to myself. I don’t hate it. I want him to take me somewhere with a locked door and finish what his tongue started.
“That was...” I have to stop and start again because my voice isn’t working properly. “That was quite a statement.”
“I don’t make statements. I make declarations.”
“Is that what this is? A declaration?”
He holds my gaze, all the lightness gone out of his face. “It’s the beginning of one.”
Across the room, I catch a glimpse of Bennett. His face is the color of old cheese, pale and slightly green around the edges. Renata is gripping his arm hard enough to leave marks. They’re both staring at us with identical expressions of shock and fury.
Good.
Let them stare. Let them see what happens when you try to humiliate a woman who’s done being humiliated.
“I need to fix my dress,” I say. “Or find a new one.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“To the ladies’ room?”
“To whatever room you’re going to.” His hand finds the small of my back, warm through the wine-soaked fabric. “I’m not leaving you alone tonight. Not after what he did to your wrist. Not after what she just tried to pull.”
I think about arguing. I think about telling him I can take care of myself, that I’ve been taking care of myself for thirty-seven years, that I don’t need a man to protect me.
But the truth is, it feels good to have someone in my corner. It feels good to not be alone.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’re waiting outside.”
“I can work with that.”
We make our way through the crowd, and I feel the eyes on us, the whispers following like a tide. By tomorrow, this will be everywhere. Matteo Salazar licking wine off Ursula Rothwell’s neck at the Vanderbilt Gala. The scandal will be delicious. The gossip columnists will have a field day.
Let them write. Let them talk. Let the whole city know that the ice queen is melting, but only for the right man.
At the edge of the ballroom, I pause and look back. Bennett and Renata are still standing where we left them, frozen, their perfect debut ruined by a moment of unexpected tenderness and a very deliberate display of desire.
Renata wanted a reaction.
She got one.
Just not the one she expected.