Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Valentino
Icount to one hundred and twenty. That's it. That's all the patience I have left before I move.
As soon as I push off the bar, she appears.
She comes out of the corridor that leads to the offices, and the relief hits me in a bizarre way. My shoulders drop half an inch. The muscles in my jaw loosen.I don't understand it, this concern. This…
Then I see her face and it curdles.
She's pale under the careful makeup. Her mouth is set in that bright, fixed line she wears, but it isn't reaching anywhere near her eyes. Something happened in that room.
She scans the crowd, and I watch her find me. The change moves across her face like weather breaking. The fixed smile loosens. Her shoulders come down. For one second she looks at me like I'm solid. Sturdy. Something that keeps the ground from falling beneath her feet.
Then I see Elio.
He's by the bar, but he's not watching the door. He's not watching the businessmen, the buyers, or the men I told him to track. His eyes are on her. His whole body has turned toward her, and his face has softened with affection and desire. Which means he's forgotten the job entirely.
Something in my chest sparks, going from warm to white-hot in the space of one breath.
I told him not to fucking look at her. Yet here he is, watching her again, looking at her like a starving man looks at his favorite meal.
I'm already moving toward him.
But she gets to me first.
She crosses the floor fast, weaving between a group of laughing men and a waiter with a tray held high.
She comes straight to me. Not to him. She stops close. "Get me a drink," she says. "Please. Right now."
It isn't a request, even with the please tacked on the end. Her voice is steady, but her hands are not. They're moving, two fingers tapping against her thigh, the gesture small enough that no one else would catch it.
I do.
"What happened," I say. I keep my eyes on her face, trying to forget Elio, because if I look at him again, I will lose it. I'm going to cross the room and do something I can't undo. That's not an option here, not with so many witnesses and Basile somewhere in the crowd.
"Nothing happened." She plays with a piece of hair that's already perfectly in place. "Francesca just gave me some very generous career advice. The kind that comes with a smile and a knife. I'd love a drink while I process the experience. Wine. Or whiskey. Or both. I'm not picky."
I turn to the bar and lift two fingers and mouth wine. He pours a glass of white and slides it across without a word.
I put it in her hand. Her fingers close around the stem and brush mine, cool against warm, and I feel that touch all the way up my arm.
"Drink slow," I say.
"I make no promises." She takes a drink the exact opposite of slow. Over the rim of the glass her eyes flick once to the other bar, to Elio, and then snap back to me. Something in her face hardens. She knows he's watching. She shifts until my body blocks hers. She's using me as a wall.
I should be insulted but something in me wants to be the one she can hide behind. Wants it badly enough that an ache erupts in my jaw as I shove it down.
"She told me to stop asking questions," she says
"What questions, Amanda."
"There's a girl," she says quietly. "A model.
At the shoot. She had a bruise on her jaw, and she flinched when I said her name.
Her hands shook the whole time and nobody would talk about it.
So I asked. Once. And the coordinator shut me down, and then Francesca just—" She stops, swallowing slowly, her throat moving as she does.
"Francesca took me into a beautiful office and told me very kindly that if I want to keep working in this industry I should remember I'm in marketing, not casting, and that agencies handle their own.
And then she held my hand, smiled and told me to enjoy the party. "
My pulse slows to a cold, lethal tempo. The way it does before I…
A girl. A bruise. An agency that handles its own.
"What's the girl's name," I say.
"Why do you want to know her name?" Her eyes sharpen on me, and under the fear there's that quickness she has, that mind I keep underestimating.
"Valentino. What is this? What are you actually doing in Milan, because I have asked you four times and you have avoided answering me four times.
And now there's a terrified girl with bruises on her face and you want her name—"
"Drink your wine." I shift, putting my body between her and the rest of the room, just slightly, just enough. "Smile while you do it. There are people watching us, and I need them to see two friends talking, not whatever this is becoming."
"That's not an answer."
"No," I agree. "It isn't."
Her jaw tightens. For a second I think she's going to throw the wine at me, and some reckless part of me almost wants her to.
Wants to see her drop the polite, polished act and let the fury out.
Instead she lifts the glass and smiles. A wide, brilliant, completely false smile, aimed somewhere over my shoulder for the benefit of anyone watching.
"You're infuriating," she says through spread lips and clenched teeth.
"I've been told."
"By people who lived to say it?"
The muscle at the corner of my mouth ticks, wanting to move.
To smile in amusement. I don't let it. "Stay close to me tonight," I tell her, and I mean it as an order.
It comes out as something rougher, something with an unusual undercurrent I'll think about later.
"If someone you don't know asks you to step out of the room, you find me. Understand?"
The false smile fades. She searches my face, and whatever she finds there scares her more than Francesca's knife-smile did, because she stops fighting me.
Amanda
"I need the bathroom," I tell him.
He doesn't look at me. His gaze stays on several men near the other bar.
"Six minutes," he says.
I pull back to stare at him. "Excuse me?"
"You have six minutes." His voice stays low and even, the same tone someone uses to tell you the soup of the day. "Then you come back here."
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, sharp and disbelieving. "Are you—are you timing my pee?"
"Six minutes, Amanda."
"Okay, first of all, that's a deeply unhinged thing to say to a grown woman." I set my glass down on the tray of a passing waiter, who doesn't break stride. "Second of all, why? What happens at minute seven? Do I turn into a pumpkin? Does the building explode?"
His jaw tightens. Just a fraction.
"I want you back soon," he says. "That's all."
"That's not an answer."
"Amanda." He finally looks at me, and the full weight of those dark eyes hit me in the chest like a fist. "Six minutes."
I want to keep arguing. To dig my heels in and demand he tell me what's actually going on, because I am not stupid.
A man does not appear at a fashion gala armed—and yes, I know he's armed, I felt it when he steadied me on the steps—and station Vittoria's ex-bodyguard-slash-my-ex-something by the bar like a sentry, all for a campaign launch.
Something is wrong in this exquisite room full of beautiful people, and everyone keeps telling me to stay in my lane.
In so many words, of course. And I don't like being handled.
But I really do have to pee. And the look on his face tells me arguing won't get me a single answer more than he's given. Which is zero.
"Fine," I say. "But when we get out of here, you and I are having a conversation. A real one. With words. Lots of them. I'm going to ask you questions, and will answer them like a normal, reasonable human being."
"Five minutes, fifty seconds."
"Oh my God." I turn on my heel, the silk of my dress whispering against my legs, and weave toward the corridor I came out of earlier.
The noise of the party drops to a muffled hum behind me.
I find the powder room halfway down. It's all gilt mirrors and a marble counter. I do what I came to do, then stand at the sink longer than I need to, running cold water over my wrists the way Vittoria taught me to do when my heart races.
In the mirror, I look exactly the way I'm supposed to look. Hair pinned. Lipstick perfect. I tilt my head.
I turn off the water.
The door opens before I reach for it, and Francesca is standing there in the corridor like she's been waiting for me.
"Hello, Amanda," she says, smiling. "I've been looking for you in a while."
"Sorry." I gesture vaguely back at the powder room. "Just needed to fix my face. A girl can only be photographed so many times before the shine wins."
"You look perfect." She says it the way she says everything, like a fact she's confirming rather than a compliment she's offering. Then she touches my elbow, light and cool. "Come with me. There's someone you need to meet."
"Oh—now?" I glance over my shoulder toward the main room, where the music and the laughter and Valentino are. "I should probably get back. My… escort gets weird if I wander off too long."
"It will take two minutes." She's already walking, pulling me along by the elbow. "This is the kind of introduction you don't say no to, Amanda. Trust me. After tonight you'll thank me."
My entire life I have been raised, trained, and rewarded for not saying no to people like Francesca Renaud.
Especially professionally. People with influence, who can make or break two years of work with a single phone call to a board, I have never told no.
My entire career runs on a current of yes, of course, I'd love to, how wonderful.
So I don't argue or pull away.
I think about my phone, tucked in the tiny clutch under my arm. I think about Valentino's voice, low and flat. Find me if anyone tries to lead me away. I should text him. Three words. Francesca, two minutes. He wouldn't even have to do anything. He'd just know.
But Francesca is right beside me, watching me with those bright, unblinking eyes, and pulling out my phone now would look like exactly what it is. A woman reporting her location to a man like a child checking in. It would look rude.
So I leave the phone where it is, and I let her steer me deeper into the palazzo, away from the noise. I tell myself the tightness in my chest is just the corset seams of this dress.
We pass two doors. At the third, Francesca stops and pushes it open without knocking.
Four or five people are scattered across the leather furniture. A woman laughs at something, low and bored. There's a glass-topped table with a bottle of something amber on it and crystal tumblers, one tipped onto its side. Someone's cigarette smoke hangs in a flat layer near the ceiling.
It feels like a party inside the party. The kind you only know about if someone tells you.
"Here she is," Francesca announces, like she's presenting a gift.
A few faces turn toward me. Not all of them. A man on the far sofa doesn't look up at all; he's murmuring to a girl beside him.
I do what I'm supposed to. What I've refined to an exact science when I walk into a room of industry professionals. I let my shoulders soften, lift my chin just so, and smile. Charm is exuded from every cell in my body, convincing everyone that I am comfortable and delighted to be here.
"Hi," I say to them. "I'm Amanda."
A man rises from the armchair near the fire, and the attention of the room seems to shift toward him, the way iron filings turn toward a magnet.
He's young. Dark hair pushed back. A suit so well cut it looks like part of his body.
He walks toward me, his smile reaching me first, warm and unhurried.
As if he has been waiting on me to walk through the door.
"Francesca has been telling me about the woman behind the Casa Aurelia launch.
I confess, I didn't believe her. I couldn't believe anyone could be that talented. "
I laugh. Partly because it’s funny which he intended, but also because flattery is a language I’m fluent in. "She’s a generous narrator. I’d take her stories with a grain of salt."
"No salt." He lifts my hand to his mouth, his lips warm against my knuckles. His thumb grazes the inside of my wrist, pausing for a moment over my pulse. "The campaign is the most alive thing to come through this house in years. The faces, the light, the strategy. That is you."
"Some of it is me," I say. "A lot of it is a very good photographer and an unreasonable amount of caffeine."
He laughs.
"Where are my manners," he says. He's still holding my hand, I realize. "Aldo. Aldo Basile."
"Basile," I repeat, keeping my smile in place, perfect and bright. "I bet the mere mention of your name gets people's attention."
"It opens a few doors." His eyes don't leave my face. There's an attentiveness in them that's almost too much. Unnerving and too steady. As if he's seeing something in my eyes—my expression I didn't volunteer. "Francesca, you didn't tell me she was funny."
"She's full of surprises," Francesca says behind me.