He moves through the room in my direction, stopping twice to shake hands, once to exchange a word with a woman in a blue blazer who laughs at whatever he says. By the time he reaches me I’ve had forty-five seconds to find my footing, and I still feel like the floor has dropped two inches.
“Livia.” He says my name like a gift he’s bestowing. He leans in for the cheek-kiss, and I let him, because the alternative requires a scene I don’t have the energy for. “I didn’t realize you’d be here.”
“I could say the same.”
“De Luca Meridian took on a subsidiary stake in the Aurelius energy division earlier this quarter. The consortium wanted representation.” He looks around the room with proprietary satisfaction, the look of a man assessing territory he has recently acquired. “Small world.”
“Remarkably,” I say.
He turns back to me, and the warmth in his expression adjusts by a fraction, just enough that I catch it and nobody else would. “You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine.” He says it the way he used to say it when I was seventeen and coming down to breakfast after crying most of the night, because some things never change. “Walk with me a moment.”
It isn’t a question. It’s never a question.
I follow him to the edge of the corridor, where a row of tall windows overlooks the formal garden and creates the illusion of privacy without the commitment of actually being alone. I can see Piper across the room in conversation with a pair of suits, her head angled slightly in my direction even as she appears fully engaged. She’s been tracking me since Dante walked in. I love her for it and I refuse to let my eyes linger too long in her direction.
“So,” Dante says, conversational, studying the garden. “The Ferretti engagement.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been hearing about it for weeks. Ferretti Global Risk is generating some interesting noise in certain circles.” He pauses. “Interesting is not always a compliment.”
“I know what interesting means.”
“Do you?” He tilts his head toward me, not quite looking at me, not quite not. “Valentino Ferretti is a serious operator. I’ll grant him that. But he’s also a man who moves very fast, accumulates leverage, and forms attachments in ways that are more strategic than they appear. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Are you warning me about someone who manipulates people for professional gain?” I keep my voice light. “That’s generous, coming from you.”
“I’m warning you,” he says, still pleasantly, “because whatever game you think you’re playing here, you are out of your depth.”
“I’m always out of my depth, according to you.”
“And yet it’s always me who ends up being right about these things.” He finally looks at me properly, and there’s nothing in his expression that I could point to in a courtroom as threatening. It’s too measured, too practiced for that.
“You have a son, Livia. That changes the parameters of every decision you make. A woman in your position, attaching herself to a man under the kind of scrutiny Ferretti currently attracts, in a professional context that puts you both in public view. That’s the kind of situation that invites questions. About stability. About judgment.”
My blood goes cold.
He doesn’t say it more plainly than that. He doesn’t need to. I’ve known this particular threat my whole life, have felt it in the way he used to comment on my choices at family dinners, in the way he looked at me when I told him I was pregnant and his first question wasn’t about my health or my plans but about who else knew.
“Nico is happy and safe,” I say, and my voice is very steady, steadier than I feel. “Whatever questions you’re implying anyone might be asking, those are your questions. Not anyone else’s.”
“Perhaps.” He glances past my shoulder, and I feel the change in him before I see it, a fractional straightening, a recalibration. “Your fiancé is watching us.”
I don’t turn around. “He has good instincts.”
“So I hear.” Something moves through Dante’s eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time, a flicker of genuine assessment. Then the smile returns, easy and warm and as useful as a closed door. “But alas everything you build, I can still reach.It’s good to see you, sweetheart. You look well. Tired, but well.”
And then he’s moving again, crossing the room toward another cluster of delegates, stopping to clap someone on the shoulder like a man who has always belonged everywhere he’s ever stood.
I realize my hands are clasped in front of me, pressing together hard enough that my knuckles ache.
I release them.
“Who was that?”
