The Ravello Foundation's autumn benefit, eighteen years running, and you have stood at the edge of this room for every one of them. Tonight Sandro lifts Margherita Bellucci's hand off his sleeve and says something low into her ear — you watch the shipping heiress's face go blank with the shock of being dismissed in public — and hands her toward his underboss with a nod. Then he crosses the floor toward you, and the crowd parts the way water parts for a knife.
His hand finds your waist and pulls you in an inch.
"Margherita asked me who I was looking at."
His voice is low, and it is the voice from before, the one without the silk in it.
"I told her the truth. I have been looking at the same woman for eighteen years, and I am done waiting for her to notice."
The chandeliers are out and the city is a wall of glass behind him. The room pretends not to see. The underboss does not. Neither do you. You know the routine he just broke because you have watched it happen to a hundred women: Sandro at the center, a new face on his arm, his hand resting on a waist that will be gone by spring. All of them were his type, which is to say none of them was you. You made your peace with it. You are the best friend, the one he keeps. You carry the emergency phone, you know the man's real name, you know where he was before he was Sandro Ravello.
Up close he smells of cedar and the smoke of a cigar he only lights on nights something ends. His hand settles at your waist like it has been waiting eighteen years for permission, and his thumb moves once against the small of your back, like he is signing something.
"Come with me. Now. Before I say the rest of it where every one of these people can hear."