Die With A Smile - Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars; Impossible - James Arthur
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Chapter Twenty
Milan always smelled like ambition, espresso, leather, and rain pressed into stone. Diane Dalton stepped out of the black car onto Via Montenapoleone with the kind of presence that made passersby glance up from their phones. Heads turned, not just because she was beautiful, but because she wore her power like a perfectly tailored coat: a cream cashmere trench belted neat at the waist, wide-leg trousers skimming heels that clicked like a metronome on marble.
Her assistant, Lola, kept pace, holding a tablet and a stack of swatches. "Your nine a.m. with Signora Bianchi at the atelier, then the tannery call about the capsule line. The dye lot from Vicenza came in a shade warmer than requested."
"Tell Bianchi we'll adjust the lining to cool it," Diane said, eyes forward. "Graphite silk, matte. It'll neutralize the warmth without killing the depth."
Lola's brows lifted, impressed. "On it."
In the atelier, bolts of fabric stood like soldiers, charcoal, bone, ink. Diane ran her fingertips along a roll of double-faced wool and felt the world settle. Here, textures listened; seams told the truth. No games, no paparazzi, no hovering families, just craftsmanship and the clean honesty of a straight stitch.
"The shoulders need half a centimeter more structure," she said, watching a model turn in the mirror. "And the pocket flap on Look Seven, narrow by two millimeters. We're sculpting sharp, not severe."
Bianchi, elegant in all black, smiled. "You see everything, Signorina Dalton."
"That's the job," Diane replied, but her mouth curved. Control felt good.
By noon, she was in a glass-walled conference room overlooking the Duomo, negotiating a licensing deal with a Swiss boutique group. She corrected clauses without looking at her notes, cut a royalty rate by two points with a single silence, and pivoted merchandising language so cleanly the other side thanked her for it.
Power, precise and quiet. That's how she liked it.
Her phone buzzed only once, face down beside her legal pad. She didn't check it. She'd set it to Do Not Disturb before takeoff and told herself it was because of the time zone. She knew better.
After the meeting, Lola slid a cappuccino into her hand. "You haven't checked your messages."
"I'm in Milan to work," Diane said, taking a sip. The foam kissed her lip; she wiped it with her thumb, staring out over the crowded piazza. A violinist's melody climbed the stone like silk.
"Chelsea texted," Lola said gently. "Twice."
Diane hesitated. "Forward it."
Lola handed over the phone. The WhatsApp preview was Chelsea's chaos in three dots and a heartbeat: Tell me you're sitting down. The image loaded slowly, pixels resolving into a photo taken at last night's charity dinner back home.
Jeffery Black. In a midnight suit cut like sin and discipline, smiling in that deliberate, dangerous way, his head slightly bent toward a woman on his arm. Isabella Harrington, all polished bone structure and old money veneer, leaning in close, whispering something into his ear. His hand rested, lightly, but undeniably, at the small of Isabella's back. Cameras flashed like lightning around them.
For a moment, the world did that awful, tilting thing. Diane's breath caught, then burned. Not because he owed her anything. He didn't. Not because she wanted a claim. She didn't. It was the story in the frame, the public ease of it, the comfort, the… choreography. It looked easy. Practiced.
Her stomach knotted, then hardened to ice.
Chelsea's messages tumbled underneath the photo:
Chels: I KNOW that look.
Chels: He's playing some kind of game or the family is. But babe… are you okay?
Chels: Say something, please.
Diane typed, erased, typed again. Finally, she texted...
D: Working. I'm fine.
She added a second text, because she wasn't cruel
D: We'll talk later. Promise.
Three dots appeared, vanished. Then: I'm here. Always. Followed by a heart she pretended not to see.
Lola waited, careful and quiet. "Do you want me to hold your afternoon?"
"No," Diane said, voice even. "We keep moving."
They moved.
At the tannery review, she dissected color with surgical calm, shifting the palette by degrees so small only obsessives would care, and her customers were obsessives. She asked after water usage, demanded transparency on chemical processes, and secured an exclusivity window that made the manufacturer swallow before agreeing.
Afterward, she walked through the Galleria, light vaulting over her in arches of glass and iron. Tourists took photos beneath the Prada mosaics; a child spun in circles until his mother laughed. Diane slowed, letting the city breathe around her. A newsstand on the corner displayed a glossy society insert in a local paper; on the cover, an English caption beneath a syndicated wire photo: Black Heir Seen With Oil Heiress At Charity Gala.
Her throat pulsed once, annoyance moved through her more than ache. Control the controllables, she reminded herself. The rest could burn.
Back at the hotel, her suite was a study in restraint: cream stone, slate linens, one huge vase of white lilies. She set her phone on the desk, opened her laptop, and drowned in the grid, runway order, boutique feedback, CAD revisions, a supply chain delay she solved by splitting shipment routes. She drafted a ruthless but polite email to a partner who thought "collaboration" meant "dilution," then rewrote a speech for an upcoming mentorship event so it sounded like her, not a committee.
The phone, traitorous thing, lit the corner of her eye.
Jeffery: How's Milan?
Jeffery: Don't ignore me.
Jeffery: I'll fly out if you keep pretending you don't see this.
Jeffery: Diane.
She stared at his name, the way it pulled at her, a gravity she refused to acknowledge. She flipped the phone face down and turned back to her screen.
An hour passed. Two. She forgot to eat. Lola called to check in; Diane insisted she was fine, then asked for tomorrow's factory schedule and a list of seamstresses who could be moved to the satin line. Work obeyed. Work made sense.
The phone buzzed again, insistent.
Jeffery: I saw the coverage. Don't believe everything you see.
Jeffery: Call me.
Her jaw tightened. The image of his hand on Isabella's back flashed in her mind, followed by the memory of his palm at the base of her own spine on the gala floor. It was an unfair comparison, and jealousy wasn't a language she let herself speak.
She put her phone on airplane mode.
By nine, rain threaded the city. Diane ordered dinner and picked at it, appetite gone. She showered, wrapped herself in the hotel robe, and stood at the window watching umbrellas bloom like ink spots below. Somewhere, a siren wailed. Somewhere, a couple laughed too loudly, their voices floating up.
Her reflection stared back: strong lines, tired eyes, a woman who didn't bow to storms. She flattened her palms to the cool glass.
"Focus," she told herself. "On the work. On what you can build. On what can't walk away."
She turned from the window, drying her hair with efficient motions, pulling it back into a loose knot. She sent Chelsea one more text...
D: Early start. I'll call after the factory. Love you.
Then climbed into bed with a stack of look sheets and a pencil, making notes in the margins until the lines softened and the ink blurred.
Just before sleep took her, a thought slipped in, unwanted and electric: if Jeffery Black wanted to play games, she'd refuse the board entirely. Let him spin headlines with an heiress and see how it felt when silence, not outrage, met him.
Her phone lay silent across the room, plugged in, a dark stone. Milan breathed outside, ambition, espresso, rain. Diane closed her eyes and chose the one thing that never betrayed her.
Work.
And in the quiet between breaths, something small and sore inside her hardened into resolve.
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