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Stepping into the expensively scented throng, I feel like every head in the room turns to look at me. I don’t immediately know whether the looks that swivel at me from all around the room are for the dress or for me. Any other time, I would think it’s the dress, but I’m only just in the top tier for couture eyesmack here. And, tonight, there are two reasons it could be for me. One is, the dress is great, but I know that I look really great in the dress.
I learned from a gang of supermodels who hung out in Daddy’s top club while they were in town on a shoot: it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, the key to being noticed and standing out is for you to stand and move in a way that makes the clothes look great, not to let them do the job for you. If you wear something long, make big movements when you walk.
Imagine an epic soundtrack following you, and move to the music. Feel the character in the clothes, and play it up. That’s how they all get the big bucks and the top billing, over the high-ticket names of the labels and dressmakers. I didn’t even need Alessio to tell me I looked great, although the buzz from his appreciation is still making me quiver in places I shouldn’t be trembling in public.
But I think everyone is watching me for the other reason. They want to know the story. Mafia gossip spreads faster then a bush fire in a dry forest. Every mafioso, every mob wife or mafia princess, will be wondering. Even the goomahs — there will be plenty here, even at something as public as this. Lots of these mob guys have no class at all. All the guests here will be thinking some of the time about me in the house of the Fortunas.
How, why, what does it mean. Is she a mistress for the don? Is she a live-in goomah — basically all the things that Alessio and Bruno already accused me of. Or has my daddy sold me off into some other kind of slavery? What’s the deal? There’s nothing to beat the cruel fascination with other people’s family dramas.
Now I realize — that was what Don Fortuna calculated, and it’s the effect he wanted. Providing a distraction is probably the only real use he can imagine for me. It will still only be second on everybody’s list of obsessions for the evening.
Front and center, of course, will be the very unfortunate events that fell on the Famiglia Crespi. Gianni and Paulo. I don’t see them represented here, at least not yet. I’m sure that everyone will understand if the family doesn’t put in an appearance. Making a show at a thing like this, it takes some balls at the best of times.
If Armando was a year or two older, he would be expected to put a on brave face and be here to demonstrate his strength in the face of adversity. It’s the done thing. Maybe not tonight, though. Perhaps even here he would get a pass, losing his father and his elder brother on the same morning, and having to step up when he might have thought he would never be called on to bear that weight of responsibility.
But, on the tips of the wagging tongues, the fact of those two events occurring on the same day won’t escape anyone’s attention for long. Among the families in the Life, speculation is the national sport, so everyone will be putting two and two together, and most of the sums will come out with something way more interesting than the all too obvious and predictable four.
Either way, I don’t care. Let them all talk. Let them guess and make up stories. Yesterday I would have hated the attention. Today I can’t get in a lather about it. I just think, Knock yourselves out.
Then I catch the look on the red face of Don Fortuna. Oh, yeah. What was it he said, Don’t change. And don’t draw attention to yourself?
Oops.
Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now. Great clothes make me feel good. And I do. So shoot me. The feeling is like walking out on a red carpet, and it’s a buzz. This time, though, maybe it could have made more sense to do what the don said, and keep it down and in low-key stealth wealth style.
Doing what Daddy tells me has always been hard enough. My reflex reaction is always to rebel. Letting the don boss me? I can’t see how that would work.
Bruno approaches me. He comes like a hurricane with a glass in each hand, and the electrifying heat of his dark and dirty shadow of a half smile.
“Don’t you love these things?”
With sin in his eyes, he says, “All the fun of the funeral home. Hot nights on the town with the creme of the living dead.”
His eye starts a fire in my gut as he hands me a drink. It’s clear in a cold and frosty martini glass, with a stick of three cocktail onions. Who has those? As I reach for the glass, my hand touches his. A jolt like a bucket of fire drops through me like liquid.
His fingers linger on mine as I take the drink.
He looks around with his assassin’s smile like nothing happened. I do the same, sniffing the glass. Shaking inside. He gestures with his glass for me to drink up.
I sniff my cocktail, warily.
“Don’t worry,” the words rumble in Bruno’s chest with a chuckle behind them. He’s close. And hot. And he’s very large, in every way. “I’m not about to poison you.”
“I’m not ready to take your word for that, or for anything else.” Not yet. Like a snow cone in the desert, I can feel my resistance starting to melt. “What is it?”
“Gibson.” He twinkles. “Some people call it a gin martini.”
I lift the cold glass to my lips. The cold liquor slips over my my tongue with a sharp and sinful bite and a smooth finish. The kick is eye-sharpening, but low and delayed. I can see the appeal.
Bruno’s scent is more intoxicating, though. It’s a heady mix of Tom Ford and raw man. His nostrils flare open and closed, and I know he’s sampling my fragrance, too. I dithered while I dressed, then hurried over the scent. I wasn’t planning on getting up close with anyone this evening, and I didn’t think it was likely, anyway.
Certainly not with anyone I would care about making that kind of an impression with.
I’m trying to remember what I sprayed. We’re both looking around the room. Smiling that formal smile that you spread on these occasions. Acknowledging everyone you recognize with a polite, distant greeting.
He reaches behind me. His fingers trace down the back of my neck, and down my spine. Then I try to keep my eyes from stretching wide as he cups my ass.
Not for the first time today, I’m boiling inside with feelings I shouldn’t be having. Feelings I don’t want. Feelings I know I can’t control, and that threaten to take me over.
