I can wait a few more hours.
Maybe.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vittoria
The mirror doesn't lie. Neither does Amanda's face.
"He's going to lose his freaking mind." She stands behind me, hands clasped together like she's watching a masterpiece unveil itself. "Babe.Babe.I'm actually jealous of a Russian mobster right now."
I smooth my hands down the black silk. The dress is a fitted bodice that hugs my curves without screamingdesperate, a neckline that hints at cleavage without giving everything away, and a slit that stops just high enough to make a man wonder. Elegant.
Sexy as hell.
"It's not too much?" I reach for the gold earrings on my vanity. Simple drops. Nothing flashy.
"It's perfect." Amanda adjusts a strand of my hair, which we spent forty-five minutes curling into soft waves. "You look like you could run a Fortune 500 company by day and destroy a man's entire existence by night."
"That's... oddly specific."
"I've been workshopping it all afternoon."
The gold slides through my earlobes. I add the matching bracelet. My nails are a deep red, almost black. My makeup took two hours. Smoky eyes that make the brown look almost black. Lips the color of crushed roses.
Nine hours. We spent nine hours preparing for this dinner.
It's just strategy, I remind myself.Playing his game better than he plays it.
A knock rattles my door.
"Vittoria?" The door opens before I can answer, and Dante's dark head appears. His eyes sweep over me once. Quick and brotherly. "You ready? Car's waiting."
Of course it's Dante. Not just Elio, who would stand silently and ask zero questions. No, Pietro sentDante. The man who practically grew up in our house, who taught me to throw a punch when I was twelve, who once threatened to castrate a boy for looking at me wrong at a family barbecue.
This is going to be a nightmare.
"Three minutes," I say.
Dante's jaw tightens. He doesn't like this. Doesn't like me going to dinner with a Bratva heir, doesn't like the dress, doesn't like any of it. But Pietro gave the order, so Dante nods once and closes the door.
Amanda waits until his footsteps fade.
"You nervous?"
"No." I turn back to the mirror, adjusting my bracelet. "I don't even want him, remember? This is just playing the game."
Amanda laughs.
"Right. Sure." She flops onto my bed, blonde hair fanning across my pillows. "We just spent nine hours at the spa. Facials. Manicures. Hair. Makeup. Then we went shopping forthedress—notadress,thedress—and you tried on seventeen options before finding this one."
"Seventeen wasn't that many?—"
"You made the saleswoman nervous, Vittoria."
"She was being dramatic."
"You told her the coral made you look like a dying fish."
