CHAPTER 4: You Look Perfect

Adeline's POV

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Two hours later I'm back in my jeans and sweater, but my skin hasn't gotten the memo, still convinced it's wearing something that costs more than my rent.

Matteo waits by a table covered in place settings, forks and knives arranged with surgical precision, ready to perform a very fancy operation on a salad. I have no idea what any of them are for.

"Welcome to etiquette crash course." He gestures to the table. "I'll keep it simple."

Nothing about this table is simple.

I must look panicked because he laughs. "At my first formal dinner, I grabbed the fish fork for salad. Still here."

That helps. Sort of.

"Why are there so many forks?"

"Formality loves complexity." He picks up the first one. "But it's really about pacing. Start from the outside and work your way in."

He walks me through it, salad fork, fish fork, main course, dessert fork resting horizontally above the plate. My head spins.

"The wine glasses." He indicates each shape. "Water. White. Red. Champagne. Larger bowl for red because it needs to breathe. Smaller for white because of temperature."

I pull out my phone and take notes. No chance I'm holding all this in my head.

"Napkin goes in your lap the moment you sit. If you excuse yourself, place it on your chair. When the meal ends, leave it to the left of your plate. Loosely."

"Why loosely?"

"Folding says you're trying too hard." He sets the fork down. "Loose says you've done this a hundred times."

So rich people come with an instruction manual and mine got lost in the mail. Every little thing means something. Which fork you pick up, where you put your napkin, how you hold a wine glass. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to remember not to drink from the finger bowl if one magically appears.

My jeans are literally being held together by a safety pin. Dinner tonight is surely instant ramen. Yet somehow I'm expected to remember the difference between a salad fork and a fish fork. 

"What about conversation? What am I supposed to talk about?"

Matteo perches on the table's edge. "Ask questions. Let them talk about themselves. Avoid politics. Religion. Money unless they bring it up first. Keep it light until you read the room."

"And if I say something wrong?"

"You will." His voice is calm. "Everyone does. The trick is not panicking when it happens."

"That's not reassuring."

"It's honest." His expression settles. "These people aren't better than you. They just had more time to learn the choreography."

His directness throws me off guard. I expected Albert's world to run entirely on performance and hierarchy, matching cufflinks and coded insults. Matteo feels like someone who remembers standing exactly where I'm standing, minus the part where he learned which fork to use.

I fidget with my phone. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What's he actually like?" I watch Matteo's face carefully. "Who is he really?"

Matteo goes quiet long enough that I almost take it back.

"Complicated," he says. "Brilliant. More alone than anyone around him understands."

"He doesn't seem lonely."

"That's exactly what makes it lonely." He meets my eyes. "He's surrounded by people who want access, leverage, proximity. You're the first in a long time who wanted nothing from him."

"I wanted to not go to jail."

"But you didn't know who he was. You needed out of an embarrassing situation." Matteo starts stacking the practice plates. "That registers differently than you'd think."

I want to press him further.

The door opens before I can.

Colette walks in, garment bag in hand. Even Matteo straightens up.

"We have the final fitting," she announces. "Mr. Rossi wishes to approve before Saturday."

My chest seize. "He's coming here?"

"He is already here."

She unzips the bag. Midnight blue silk sparkles under the light.

Every instinct fires at once. Grab the bag. Find the subway. Send Albert a message explaining why this whole arrangement is absurd and possibly illegal. My feet stick to the tiles.

I take the dress.

I change in the private bathroom off the conference room, the fabric settling over me more easily this time, like it's learned the shape of me.

 I look in the mirror. The woman looking back could walk into a gala, could stand beside Albert Rossi without the whole room knowing she took the train here. She looks certain, like she arrived at this exact moment on purpose instead of getting lost twice on the way. I wish I felt a fraction of what she looks like.

I step back into the conference room.

Colette circles me immediately, adjusting the skirt. "Perfect. Don't move."

Nobody says anything. Even Colette stops adjusting the hem

The door opens.

I don't turn around. I don't need to. My nose picks up cedar and a warmer scent underneath it. My pulse picks up.

Albert steps into the room and stops in the doorway. His eyes find me through the mirror and stay. His jaw moves, the smallest possible adjustment, gone before I can be certain I saw it.

He crosses the room and stops closer than necessary. His fingers brush the fabric at my shoulder, the contact lasting less than a second.

"Fine work, Colette." His voice drops a pitch. "She'll do."

I should probably be offended. Weirdly I'm not. His eyes haven't moved from me since he walked in.

"Tomorrow's the charity gala," he says, redirecting to Matteo. "Car picks her up at six thirty."

He moves toward the door. His steps falter and turn back. Our eyes meet in the mirror's reflection.

"You look perfect."

He leaves before I even think of a reply. The door slams behind him. I stare at the space he left.

Colette makes a knowing tsk. "That went well."

"He barely said anything."

"Exactement." She lifts the dress from my shoulders. "Mr. Rossi says very little. You must learn to hear what he does not say."

The way ‘perfect’ came out. The speed at which he recovered and left, like a man realizing he'd said something out loud he meant to keep in his head. I keep running both on repeat, probably more times than is medically advisable.

—

Twenty minutes later I'm back in my regular clothes. Colette hands over the garment bag with the gravity of someone passing something irreplaceable.

"Saturday." She holds my gaze. "Remember to breathe."

"And if I mess up? Wrong fork, dumb comment, trip in heels?"

"You recover. Smile. Move forward." Her expression softens. "The real mistake is impersonating someone you are not. Stop performing fear. It doesn't suit you."

Matteo walks me to the elevator, carrying the garment bag because both my hands death-grip my bag strap.

"You'll be fine tomorrow." He says it the way people say things they actually mean. "Every person in that room is performing something. You're newer to the production."

The elevator arrives.

"Adeline."

I turn back.

"Don't misread him," Matteo says. "He doesn't get that close without a reason."

The doors close before I can ask what he means. I ride down alone, watching the floor numbers descend. The dress across my arms feels heavier than silk has any right to.

The screen lights up.

‘Details for tomorrow: Car arrives 6:30. Hair and makeup team will meet you at your apartment at 2 PM. Everything is arranged. All you need to do is show up. M.’

Hair and makeup. At my apartment, which currently contains a leaning tower of library books and a coffee mug growing its own ecosystem.

The subway carries me home through the familiar underground dark. When I surface, my street looks exactly the same, cracked front steps, graffiti across the mailboxes, the smell of someone's dinner drifting down from the second floor.

I climb the stairs. Key in the lock.

My studio greets me with its usual wreckage, books on every surface, this morning's coffee mug still holding its ground in the sink. Real life, preserved, unimpressed by my evening.

I hang the garment bag on the back of my door. It looks out of place here, too elegant for the chipped paint and secondhand furniture. A reminder of everything I'm about to walk into.

I open a message from Mom I haven't read since 2pm.

‘How's the studying going, sweetheart? Don't forget to eat real food, please not ramen.’

Guilt prickles, and weirdly specific, as if she has a hidden camera in my kitchen.

‘Going well. Promise I'm eating properly. Love you.’

I make ramen anyway. Sit on my bed with the bowl balanced on my knees, slurping noodles as I  stare at the dress.

Tomorrow I'm walking into a room where everyone probably learned table manners before they learned multiplication while I learned mine this afternoon.

Albert will be there. Which feels even more stressful than the room full of strangers.

‘He doesn't get that close without a reason.’

Matteo’s voice haunts my head.

I think about the warning text again, the untraceable number, the black car that vanished before I could blink. Someone knew I'd end up here. Knew before I did.

I wash the bowl. Pull on my oldest pajamas and basically fling myself into my bed.

The dress hangs in my direct line of sight, a different version of me waiting on the back of a door.

I reach over and turn off the light. In the dark, I can still see its outline.

Tomorrow I walk into Albert Rossi's world for the first time.

I have to survive.

It's a dangerous place to be.