The dress was blue. I picked it myself, which felt like more of a victory than it probably should have for an eighteen-year-old living in a mansion full of men who would burn the city down before they let anything touch me.
That was the thing about the Morettis.
They loved you like a locked door.
"Stop moving," Romeo said from behind me.
"I'm standing still."
"Your shoulders aren't."
I exhaled slowly and let him fix the clasp of my necklace, which he'd already attempted twice and failed. His fingers were careful — more careful than you'd expect from someone who used those same hands for things I didn't let myself think about too often. That was another thing about this family. The tenderness and the danger lived so close together you stopped being surprised by either.
The clasp clicked.
Romeo stepped around to look at me. He did his usual scan.....top to bottom, unhurried, like he was running some quiet internal checklist. I'd had eighteen years of it. I knew how to stand still for it.
"Stay close tonight," he said.
"I always stay close."
"I know." He didn't say what he was thinking after that. He didn't have to.
From the doorway, Luca's voice arrived flat and unbothered. "She's not going to war, Romeo."
"In this house?" Romeo didn't even turn. "She is."
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling and looked past both of them to where Elio stood quietly against the wall, watching the whole thing with that calm, steady attention he gave everything. He caught my eye and gave me the smallest nod — the kind that meant go, I'll handle them.
I went.
The party had already swallowed the ground floor whole by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs.
Music. Laughter. The low, layered hum of too many conversations folding into each other. The chandelier threw light across every surface and the guests moved through it easily, the way people move when they feel untouchable — loose-limbed, unhurried, comfortable in their own noise.
I had learned to move like that too.
It took years. But I was good at it now.
I worked through the room the way I always did — smiling when I needed to, nodding when I didn't, keeping my expression open and my thoughts somewhere no one could reach them. Matteo appeared from nowhere with a glass of sparkling water already in hand, pressed it into my palm with a grin that asked for nothing, and vanished back into the crowd before I could say anything. That was Matteo, always appears when you least expect.
I drifted. Said happy birthday to myself three times in other people's voices. Shook hands with men whose names I already knew I'd forget.
And then — without deciding to, without any warning at all ..... I felt the room change.
Not dramatically. Not the way it does in films, where the music cuts and everyone turns. It was quieter than that. A shift in the air, almost. The way a conversation dips half a second before something important gets said.
I turned toward the entrance.
He stood at the threshold like he had all the time in the world and knew it.
Anthonio Valentino.
Romeo's best friend. They were typically age mates. The kind of man this world produced when it wanted to remind you what dangerous actually looked like — not loud, not obvious, but certain. Certain in the way he held himself, certain in the way his eyes moved across the room, slow and deliberate, cataloguing without rushing.
I had seen him before. Enough times to know his name, to recognize his silhouette, to be aware of him the way you're aware of weather.
I had never looked at him like this.
He was dressed simply — dark jacket, no tie — and he hadn't done anything yet except arrive, but the room had already adjusted around him the way rooms do around people who don't need to ask for space. Guests shifted without realizing it. Conversations tilted. Even the music seemed to settle into something lower, something that fit better.
Romeo crossed toward him, and they shook hands the way men do when the friendship is old enough to skip performance — brief, genuine, easy.
I watched from across the room and told myself I was just observing.
I was good at observing.
Anthonio said something that made Romeo laugh. Then his gaze moved again — that same slow, methodical sweep — and this time, it didn't pass over me.
It stopped.
Right on me.
My breath didn't catch. I want to be clear about that. I was eighteen, not twelve, and I had grown up in a house full of intimidating men. I knew how to hold eye contact without flinching.
I held it.
For exactly three seconds.
Then I looked away — down at my glass, at the ice shifting inside it — and told myself the warmth moving up the back of my neck was just the room. Just the crowd. Just the particular heat that comes from too many people in one space.
I didn't look back.
I didn't need to.
I could feel that he was still watching.
I found air near the far end of the terrace, where the guests thinned out and the music softened to something almost bearable.
I stood there longer than I meant to.
The night was cool. The city glittered beyond the estate walls, distant and indifferent, doing what it always did — moving, breathing, completely unbothered by anything happening inside these rooms. I liked that about it sometimes. The indifference felt honest.
My fingers found my necklace. They always did when I needed something to hold onto — the small oval pendant, worn smooth from years of exactly this, rubbing my thumb over it until my breathing slowed and my thoughts stopped running ahead of me.
I heard him before I saw him.
Not his footsteps. Not a sound, exactly. Just that same shift in the air that had announced him at the entrance, quieter now, closer.
I didn't turn around.
"You've been out here a while."
His voice was low. Unhurried. The kind of voice that didn't need to be loud because it already assumed you were listening.
"I needed air," I said.
"From your own party."
"It's a lot of people."
A beat of silence. The city hummed below us. Somewhere inside, the music changed.
"Happy birthday, Andrea."
I turned then — finally, slowly — and found him closer than I expected, leaning against the railing with his arms folded, watching me with an expression I didn't have a name for. Not quite neutral. Not quite anything I recognized.
"You say it like you mean it," I said.
His eyes didn't move from mine. Steady. Certain.
"I do."
Two words.
That was all.
And I thought about them for the rest of the night.