Across the room, Marchetti arrives late because he always arrives late, it's a power move that stopped working a decade ago, but he hasn't figured that out yet. He's sixty-three, built like a man who used to be dangerous and now just has money, and he makes his way around the room with the particular energy of someone who has already decided tonight is going to be about him.
He reaches us.
"Rafael." We shake hands. His eyes move immediately to Gia, sliding over her in a way that makes me want to break two of his fingers. "And this must be the new wife. De Luca's girl."
"Gia Caruso," I stare pointedly at the man.
No man is going to belittle my wife and be allowed it.
He looks at her like she's a piece of furniture that's been moved into the wrong corner. "De Luca's girl, the Ghost Heiress" he repeats, to me, like she isn't standing right there. "Salvatore finally found a use for her then. Couldn't do much with the first one."
The room doesn't go quiet. Nobody else hears it. Just the three of us in our small corner and Gia's expression, which doesn't change, which is the thing that gets me. She doesn't flinch.
She holds her wine glass and looks at Marchetti with a flatness that says she has been underestimated by men like him her entire life and stopped finding it surprising a long time ago.
I look at Marchetti.
"Careful," I say.
Something moves through his face. Men who've been in this world long enough know what that word means when it comes from me. They know what follows it if they don't adjust.
He adjusts.
"A pleasure," he says to Gia, performing a smile, and moves on.
I don't watch him go. I watch her. She takes a sip of wine and her hand is completely steady.
Good girl,I think, and I mean it differently than I've meant anything today.
"You didn't have to do that," she says quietly.
"I know," I say.
She looks at me then. Two full seconds, and then away again.
We move through the evening. I introduce her to Conti, who is gracious because Conti is always gracious, and to the Valenti brothers, who are polite because I'm standing next to her. I watch her calibrate to each new person, adjusting by degrees, a different register for Conti than for the Valentis, reading each one before she's finished shaking their hand.
Then there's Greco.
He arrives in the second half of the evening, younger than most men here, recently elevated after his father's death, still working out where he fits. I've watched him in three gatherings now. The pattern is the same each time: he finds something he wants and he stares at it.
Tonight he finds Gia.
Not overt. Not stupid. A sustained attention from across the room, his gaze tracking her when she moves and settling on her when she's still. He hasn't approached. He's just watching.
I set down my glass.
Before I move, Fontana gets there.
He's been hovering at the edge of Conti's inner circle all evening, sixty years old, the specific breed of man who measures his own importance by finding cracks in other people's. He stops beside Conti's wife, close enough to join the conversation, and his eyes move over me across the room with the assessing look of a man who has decided to test something.
"The Caruso couple," he says, loud enough to carry, to Conti's wife but angled for the room. "Interesting alliance. Though I notice the new wife doesn't seem to stay close to her husband." A small smile. "One wonders if the arrangement is as solid as announced."
Conti's wife says nothing. A few heads turn.
I am already watching Gia.
She's heard it. I know she's heard it because the set of her shoulders changes by one degree and her eyes do a single sweep of the room, fast and assessing, the calculation happening behind her face in real time. I wait to see what she does with it.
