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"You don't know what you're talking about. You don’t know how our world works." he says.

And that is the part that does it.

"Oh my God." I laugh. "You're doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you talk to me like I'm a sweet, dumb little girl who wandered into the grown-up room." I shove a strand of hair out of my face. "Newsflash, Conti. I read a situation better than you think I do. So you can sit there and call it a 'security concern' all you want, but don't you dare talk to me like I can't tell when a man is lying with a straight face." I look out my window so he can't see my face. The streetlights blur and run together through the wet glass.

He doesn't answer. He pulls back into traffic. I sit there with my heart slamming and absolutely no idea why it hurts so much

CHAPTER EIGHT

Amanda

The phone buzzes against my chest, and I let it ring twice before I wipe my face with the back of my hand and answer.

"Hey, babe.” My voice cracks on the last word.

"You're crying? What happened?"

I roll onto my back. I stare at the hotel ceiling, using it as a focal point to distract me. My eyes feel swollen. Tomorrow I'll have to ice them down and pile on enough concealer to spackle a wall. And the gala is tonight, where I'll meet the actual people running Casa Aurelia. The ones above Marco. The ones who handed me this campaign and have apparently been watching to see if I'd drop it.

"I'm fine," I say. "It's just—God, it's been a lot. Two years of pitching this thing, and now it's real. I'm exhausted, you know? I had a moment. That's all. A very dramatic, very ugly moment."

"Amanda."

"I'm serious. I worked myself stupid. I cried about a spreadsheet basically." I laugh, and it comes out too fast. The way it does when I'm avoiding a subject. "I'm allowed one breakdown per campaign. It's in the contract."

There's a pause on her end. I can picture her. Hair shoved back, eyes narrowed, deciding whether to push. Vittoria has known me since we were kids. She knows the difference between my real laugh, and the one I use when I'm hiding something. Back then, it was usually over my parents.

"Okay," she says finally. "But if it's not the spreadsheet, you'd tell me."

"Of course I would." Lie. "You're my person. Who else would I dump my garbage on?"

"Sophia. Apparently you two text now."

"Sophia is delightful and you're jealous." I press my palm flat against my sternum, where the ache is. "I have to get ready, hon. Big night. Important people. I have to go be charming for strangers for four hours straight."

"Send me a picture of the dress."

"Obviously."

We hang up, and I keep staring at the ceiling.

I can't tell Vittoria why I really cried, because the real reason is sitting somewhere in this city. I can still feel his hand on my throat. The way his thumb pressed against my skin., The real reason is thirty-eight years old, and barely looks at me. The real reason has a name she would recognize.Valentino.

I was fifteen the first time I saw him.

It was summer in Chicago. It was hot like every year. That thick wet heat that makes everyone cranky and slow. Vittoria's family had this enormous house with a courtyard and lemon trees in pots.

Valentino came over from Italy that year. Aria's nephew, somebody said. He was twenty-eight, and he moved through that courtyard like the heat couldn't touch him, his shirt open one button too many, and I forgot how to breathe.

I didn't have words for it then. I just knew that when he looked at me—when he handed me a plate at the long table and said here, bambina, in that low voice with the accent dragging at the vowels—my whole body lit up like a struck match.

Bambina. Little girl. Because that's what I was. That's all I was.

But I went home, and I couldn't stop thinking about him. For four years I couldn't stop. I'd see him once or twice a year, at holidays, at the family things Vittoria dragged me to, and every single time my stupid heart would do this hopeful pathetic lurch, like maybe this time he would see me.