I watch Valentino’s face. I watch the careful, professional composure he’s maintained for two days crack, just slightly, just for a second, before he catches it and smooths it back into place. Something soft moves through his expression atmy friend, something that has nothing to do with the performance we’re both maintaining and everything to do with a boy who has no idea what’s actually happening between the adults at his table, who simply knows that this man builds good racetracks and deserves to be told so.
“Better than Mommy,” Valentino repeats, looking at Nico with an expression that, for just a moment, isn’t cold at all. “High praise.”
“It’s true,” Nico says, with the absolute confidence of someone who has never once doubted himself about anything. “Mommy crashes them on purpose.”
“I do not crash them on purpose.”
“You do,” Nico says serenely, returning to his pasta, the matter settled as far as he’s concerned, and for one brief, fragile moment, it feels almost normal between the three of us.
Two seats down, I catch Piper hissing something at the man seated beside her, and it takes me a moment to register that the man is Dominic Calder, apparently placed there by some seating chart logic related to the gala overlap, and that whatever they’re arguing about has nothing to do with us.
“—because structure exists so beauty doesn’t collapse,” Dominic is saying, low and clipped, gesturing at the table arrangement with the particular precision of a man who has opinions about flatware. “You cannot simply scatter forty centerpieces and call it organic. Organic is a choice that still requires a plan.”
“Beauty exists,” Piper says, equally low, equally sharp, “so structure doesn’t become a prison. You’ve spent two days trying to force tonight into a template, and the result is going to look like a corporate retreat instead of a celebration, because you cannot account for the fact that people respond to things that feel alive, not things that feel audited.”
“Things that feel alive,” Dominic says, “tend to fall apart by ten o’clock.”
“Things that feel audited,” Piper says, “were never alive to begin with.”
There’s a pause. I watch it happen from two seats away and for a moment neither of them seems to know what to do.
“That’s a good line,” Dominic says finally, with what sounds, astonishingly, like genuine respect.
“I have several,” Piper says, recovering faster, reaching for her wine. “I’m saving the rest for when you deserve them.”
I look away before either of them notices me watching, and when I glance toward the head of the room, I find Dante watching the careful performance of a family we are putting on—from Valentino and me to Nico between us playing with his pasta.
He’s smiling.
Not his usual smile, the warm, practiced one designed for rooms full of people he wants something from. This is smaller, more private, the smile of a man who has just confirmed something he suspected, and who is already calculating what to do with the confirmation.
I think about the corridor two days ago, his voice low and reasonable, implying things about my fitness as a mother without ever quite saying them outright. I think about every version of that smile I’ve seen across thirty years of being his daughter, the way it never quite reaches his eyes, the way it has always meant something is already in motion that I haven’t been told about yet. He has never once smiled at me like that without a plan already underway behind it, and the fact that tonight’s smile is aimed somewhere between Valentino and me, rather than at either of us directly, makes it worse rather than better. Itmeans whatever he’s seen tonight isn’t really about me at all. It’s about Nico.
I don’t know what he’s seen. I don’t know what he thinks he knows. But the smile follows me for the rest of the dinner, settling into my chest like a stone, and underneath the relief of Nico’s small, unknowing joy and the fragile almost-normalcy of the last ten minutes, a colder thought takes root and refuses to leave.
Whatever Dante is planning, he has already decided how he’s going to use it.
And I have no idea how much time we have before he does.
Chapter Twenty-Four
VALENTINO
Dante De Luca finds me in the lodge’s private study during the closing event’s reception. He must have chosen his moment carefully, because the study is the one room in the building without a clear sightline from the main hall.
I had stepped away from the reception for exactly four minutes, intending to confirm a detail with the lodge’s events coordinator about the closing toast, and I notice, in retrospect, that Dante’s timing was precise enough to suggest he’d been watching for exactly this kind of gap.
“Ferretti.” He closes the door behind himself, unhurried with the ease of a man who has never once in his life worried about being where he isn’t wanted. “I’ve been hoping to find a quiet moment with you before the retreat closes.”
“Make it brief. I have an event to host.”
“Of course.” He crosses to the bar cart in the corner, pours himself two fingers of whiskey without asking whether I want any, and turns to face me with a relaxed authority that’s meant to communicate he’s already decided how this conversation goes. “I’ll get straight to it. De Luca Meridian would like to acquire a controlling interest in Ferretti Global Risk.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the terms.”
“I don’t need to hear the terms. The company isn’t for sale, and even if it were, you would not be the buyer I’d choose.” I keep my voice level, the same tone I use closing out a contractnegotiation that’s already concluded in my favor. “Is there anything else?”
