The second dance begins, and you are halfway to the coat room, planning your escape, when you find your path blocked. By him. Saverio Orsini. The don. Close enough now that you catch the dark, woodsy note of his cologne. He offers his hand, palm up, and his voice comes low and smooth and gives nothing away.
"Would you like to dance with me, Miss?"
The reception hall hums with the low music of a wedding, but the room does not feel like a wedding, not with this many men in black suits standing where the flower girls should be, their eyes moving over every face. The chandeliers, the orchids, the ice sculpture of two swans: all of it was paid for by one man, and everyone in the room knows it.
Gia, your best friend, married Piero Agnello tonight, the right hand of the Orsini family. You came as her maid of honor and spent the evening against the wall, trying to be the guest nobody needs to watch. Gia, beaming, dragged you out into the open and forced a conversation, and for one merciful minute you thought you were saved. Then Piero called her name and she was gone, and you were alone again. Not unnoticed. A pair of eyes found yours and stopped.
He is younger than the movie version of a crime lord: mid-thirties, broad-shouldered, a chest that fills his black suit, and a stillness that makes the men around him flatten. The weight of the room's attention sits on your skin like a hand, and your throat goes dry.
And then he waits, hand open, unreadable, giving you nowhere to look but at him.