The conservatory was getting cold. The afternoon light was fading. Somewhere in the house, Sofia would be setting up for my fitting, laying out the black dress and the black shoes and all the other costume pieces for tomorrow's performance.
I stood up and left the portfolio where it lay.
It didn't belong to me anymore.
Sofia'sfingersweregentlein my hair, separating strands, twisting them into something elegant. I sat at my childhood vanity and watched a stranger take shape in the mirror.
Pale pink walls that I'd begged my father to let me repaint. The canopy bed with its gauzy curtains, appropriate for a princess in a fairy tale, ridiculous for a grown woman. Bookshelves lined with the novels I'd escaped into when reality became too heavy to carry—Jane Austen and the Brontës and all those stories where women found love and autonomy in the same package, as if such things existed outside of fiction.
The books were dusty now. I hadn't read for pleasure in years.
"Hold still, bella." Sofia pressed a pin into my scalp, securing another twist. "The updo frames your face beautifully. You have your mother's bone structure, you know. She would be so proud."
I made a sound that could have meant anything.
The funeral dress hung on the closet door, still in its garment bag. Valentino. Black crepe, fitted through the bodice, a modest neckline that would photograph well in the church. My father had ordered it through his personal shopper in Manhattan—one of those women who understood that "appropriate for a funeral" meant something different for families like ours. The dress said grief. It also said money. It also said look at me but don't look too closely.
Sofia unzipped the bag and lifted the dress free with the reverence of someone handling a religious artifact. "Try it on now, yes? We need to check the hem."
I stood and let her help me into it. The fabric was cool against my skin, sliding over my body like water, like something that wanted to own me. Sofia zipped the back and stepped away to assess her work.
"Perfetto." She clasped her hands together. "You look like a movie star. So elegant. So refined."
The mirror showed me a woman in black. Dark hair swept up, exposing the line of her neck. Eyes that reflected nothing. Cheekbones that caught the light exactly as they were supposed to.
This is what she's for.
The thought surfaced without warning, clear and cold as ice water.
Not her mind. Not her work. Not her ideas. Her face. Her bloodline. Her ability to stand beside a powerful man and make him look legitimate.
Sofia was adjusting the hem, kneeling at my feet with pins in her mouth, murmuring about quarter inches and the height of my heels. I stood perfectly still and let her work, the way I'd stood perfectly still for a hundred fittings before this one.
Another fitting surfaced in my memory. Ten years ago, almost exactly. A red dress for the Valenti Christmas party—silk, backless, the kind of dress that made my father frown and say it was too mature for a girl my age. But he'd let me wear it anyway because the Valentis were important and the party was important and I was already learning that being beautiful was a tool the family expected me to wield.
Enzo had noticed me across the ballroom. I remembered the exact moment our eyes met—the way his gaze had traveled down my body and back up, slow and deliberate, like he was memorizing me. He'd been forty-two years old. I'd been sixteen. I hadn't understood what that meant.
What I'd understood was that someone was finally seeing me.
He'd made his way through the crowd, smooth as a shark through water, and leaned down to whisper in my ear: "You're the most beautiful girl here. Do they know what they have?"
I'd blushed. I'd felt special. I'd felt chosen.
God, I'd been so young.
I remembered it so clearly. His hand on the small of my back. The weight of it, the warmth, the way it felt like a claim.
"You shouldn't be drinking," he'd said, his voice low and amused. "But I won't tell if you won't."
I'd felt so grown up. So special. Here was this powerful man, this friend of my father's, treating me like an equal. Like someone worth noticing.
That's how it started. Small attentions. A hand that lingered too long on my shoulder. Comments about how mature I was for my age, how different from other girls, how he could talk to me in ways he couldn't talk to anyone else.
The phone calls came next. Late at night, when my family was asleep, his voice in my ear like a secret we shared. He told me things—about the business, about his marriage (unhappy, of course, his wife didn't understand him), about the loneliness of being a man in his position. He made me feel like I was the only person who truly saw him.
I was sixteen years old and I believed every word.
The hotel room happened on a Thursday afternoon. He'd sent a car for me, told me to tell my family I was shopping with friends. The room was expensive and anonymous, all white sheets and heavy curtains, and he'd been so gentle at first. So careful to tell me this was special, I was special, what we had was different from anything else in his life.
