There were so many courses I lost count, each one more delicious than the last, but the food was so light, so fresh, that I wasn’t even full when the wait staff cleared our plates.
Jagger ordered an array of desserts and excused himself to go to the men’s room.
“So how do we get to Alina?” Bram asked.
We’d put off talking about Alina and Dimitri, but now that we’d eaten, it was time to get serious. As much as I would have preferred to be in Capri on vacation, that wasn’t why we were here.
We needed to find Alina and stay on her until she met up with Dimitri.
“We get into the White Night gala,” Vigo said.
“Easier said than done,” I said. “It’s invitation only, and the invitations are issued to socialites, tech bros, celebrities, and fashion designers.”
We stopped talking when our server returned bearing several desserts: a flourless chocolate cake made with almonds, a small lattice-topped tart, a piece of yellow cake dripping syrup, tiramisu, and a lemon pouf I knew from the menu was the delizia al limone, a lemon sponge cake with lemon cream and limoncello.
“This looks amazing,” I said, wondering where to start.
Vigo dug into the chocolate cake. “Hmmm, wow. That’s good.”
“We should wait for Jagger.” I looked over my shoulder, past the well-heeled diners around us, toward the restrooms where Jagger had disappeared into the restaurant.
Where was he?
“No way,” Vigo said. “He snoozes he loses.”
Bram picked up a fork and tried the lemon sponge cake. “So how do we get in?”
Jagger slid into his seat. “Like this.”
He set two thick vellum envelopes on the table.
“What are those?” I asked.
He picked up a spoon and went in for some tiramisu. “Open one.”
I hesitated, then opened the flap on one of the envelopes.
When I saw what it was, I shoved the thick card stock back into the envelope and looked around.
“Are you crazy?” I asked him.
“Is that a rhetorical question?” He tried to feed me a bite of the tiramisu, but I frowned and he set down the spoon.
“Where did you get these?”
“The couple that came in before us,” he said. “He’s a private equity big shot. I saw the envelopes sticking out of her bag.”
I leaned over the table so the people next to us wouldn’t hear. “So you stole them?”
“Sure, if you want to call it that,” Jagger said.
“What would you call it?”
Jagger laughed. “Lightening her load.”
“So we have two invitations to the gala,” Bram said.
Silence settled over the table in the moment before Vigo looked from me to Hawk and Jagger.
