CHAPTER 5: The Woman Beside Rossi

Albert's POV

★ The Metropolitan Gala ★

Noise fills the hall as guests dressed in silk and tailored suits move through the main gallery, champagne glasses balanced between manicured fingers. Near the Temple of Dendur, a string quartet tunes their instruments, notes rising beneath the layered conversations.

Everything is where it should be.

I hold a champagne flute without drinking from it, rotating the stem between my fingers while a man beside me explains an investment I've rejected twice.

“Rossi, you haven't given your say on the port exchange.” Anderson's eldest son smiles as though persistence makes him intelligent. “It's a really good deal to invest in.”

“Yes,” another man quickly adds.

I glance at him and recognize Mr. Anderson, his tuxedo stretched across his stomach while one hand holds a champagne glass and the other rests possessively around the waist of a young woman who looks barely interested in being there.

“It's an excellent investment,” he continues. “I assure you.”

My gaze drops to the champagne turning slowly inside my glass.

Assurance. That's what men offer when numbers fail them. The port they're trying to sell me is partially under Rossi control. They don't know that.

I raise my eyes. “What makes you think I'll invest?”

The question leaves his smile struggling to stay in place. The younger Anderson's smile falters as well.

Silence answers.

I look around the group. Men in expensive tuxedos. Women in dresses worth more than some people's homes. Everyone holding something. A glass. A purse. An arm. A smile.

Most of the women beside these men aren't part of the conversation. They're decoration, another display of wealth and youth.

The young woman beside Mr. Anderson draws my attention. She looks up at me through lowered lashes. Her fingers slide through her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear.

Is this what they were taught makes them alluring?

She smiles. “Mr. Rossi.” Her voice comes out with a tiny sound. “It's a pleasure meeting you.”

I take another slow turn of my champagne.

“But not to overstep,” she continues, “I noticed you came alone.”

Someone beside her clears his throat. “That's how he is.”

A few nervous laughs rise through the group. I don't smile, and the laughter dies almost immediately.

The woman doesn't seem to notice. “I was actually thinking about introducing you to a friend.”

She gestures, and another woman in blue satin appears beside her with a smile that suggests she's been waiting for her cue.

I look at her, then at Mr. Anderson, whose arm remains around her waist, and finally back at the woman.

“He's married.”

The color drains from Mr. Anderson's face.

She blinks. “I…”

“And you're here in her place. That's rich.”

The group falls silent. She looks toward Mr. Anderson, and he immediately releases her waist.

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Rossi.”

I take a sip of my champagne. “Teach your mistress when to hold her tongue.”

His jaw tightens. “My apologies.”

“See that they remain apologies.”

The younger Anderson suddenly finds his champagne fascinating.

My phone vibrates against my pocket. I ignore it.

It vibrates again.

Matteo.

I glance at the screen.

Matteo: Car arrives in 2 minutes.

I check my watch for the third time since six. She signed the contract. She attends six events. We both move on.

It was a simple arrangement. I seem to have misplaced the simple part.

Outside, cameras surge at the entrance. A car door opens. Adeline steps out, and every lens turns toward her at once. Her fingers press into her clutch, knuckles pale for the briefest moment. Then her chin rises, and she gives the cameras level eyes.

She moves through the entrance.

I watch the room recalibrate around her. A hush travels through the gallery as people decide how much interest is safe to show. Whispers remain beneath the music.

“Who is she?”

“I've never seen her before.”

“Is she with Rossi?”

Mrs. Ashford leans toward her husband, diamonds catching every available light, voice pitched precisely for overhearing while leaving room for denial later.

“Well. This should be interesting.”

Adeline reaches my side. Her hand finds my arm. Smile unwavering.

“Hi.”

That's all.

As if we're meeting in a café rather than standing in front of a room that has already decided she's either a joke or a threat and hasn't settled on which.

I guide her deeper into the gallery, hand at the small of her back. Her spine draws upright beneath my palm, and I register how many people notice the contact before looking elsewhere.

“They're all staring,” she says under her breath.

“Yes.”

“Good or bad?”

“Depends what they see.”

Mrs. Ashford intercepts us near the Monet.

“Well. This is unexpected, Albert.” Her eyes sweep over Adeline, inventorying flaws for discussion over brunch. “And who is this lovely creature?”

“Adeline Carter.”

“How refreshing. And where is your family from, dear?”

The question carries a familiar edge.

I don't intervene. This is the part of the evening I need to see.

Adeline tilts her head. “Queens. My mother's a librarian.” A faint smile touches her mouth. “She always said I was too curious for my own good.”

Mrs. Ashford opens her mouth.

Adeline gestures toward the canvas behind her. “Is this from the Water Lilies series? He painted these while his eyesight was deteriorating. The way he found light when he could barely see it anymore.”

Mrs. Ashford blinks.

“I. Yes. Quite right.”

She retreats, uncertain whether she's been charmed or dismissed. She says nothing else while I'm standing there.

That's the part that matters. Adeline doesn't need to dominate a room. She needs the room to reconsider every insult it might have offered her.

It does.

For the next hour, a senator's wife circles a question about her education, and Adeline answers without flinching. An art dealer tries to corner her with technical vocabulary, and she admits what she doesn't understand instead of performing expertise she lacks. She learns the waitstaff's names from their badges and uses them, with the same tone she gives the people paying for the party.

I've watched people perform authenticity for a living. They crack within forty minutes.

She's two hours in, and I haven't found the seam.

What I have found is this: nobody insults her to her face. Not one comment sharp enough to leave a mark, not one word that doesn't stop itself halfway through.

In this room, that's not manners.

That's fear wearing manners as a costume, and it's mine, borrowed and standing beside her whether she understands it or not.

Vivian finds us near eleven.

Fifteen years, four continents of shared interests, and a fortune she built through a kind of ruthlessness even I respect, which isn't a compliment I hand out socially.

“Interesting choice.”

Her eyes move across Adeline with the same assessment she gives a company before acquisition.

“You work in fashion?”

Adeline shakes her head. “No. I'm planning to start a business. I'm working on it.”

“Everyone starts somewhere. What makes yours different?”

There is no safe exit from that question. Confidence reads as arrogance. Deflection reads as weakness.

Adeline takes a breath, a small lift appearing at the corner of her mouth.

“I don't know yet. Ask me in a year, if you remember me by then.”

Vivian's eyebrow lifts.

A smile crosses her face and disappears just as fast. She turns to me and drops into Russian.

“She’s either genuinely clever or genuinely herself. Either way, she's dangerous.”

Then she's gone, dissolving back into the crowd.

Adeline looks up at me. “What did she say?”

“That you surprised her.”

“Is that good?”

“With Vivian, yes.”

The orchestra shifts into a waltz.

I haven't danced at one of these in years, and I extend my hand anyway. Every eye in the room is already deciding what this means, and I'd rather they decide it while watching me choose it.

“Dance with me.”

Her eyes go wide. “I've never waltzed.”

“You've never done a lot of things tonight.”

I bring her onto the floor before she can talk herself out of it. She stumbles twice in the opening bars. I adjust my grip and hold her through it.

“Follow my lead.”

“I'm trying with these heels.” She huffs.

Soon the tension drains from her shoulders, and she stops fighting the rhythm. Her hand closes around mine. We spin past watching couples, past deliberate glances, and past the low commentary that never stops in rooms like this.

Her hazel eyes stay on mine. Her bottom lip presses together in concentration. Chandelier light moves across her face as we rotate.

She's near enough now that I catch the scent Colette chose for her, understated against the heavier perfume filling the gallery. My thumb shifts at her waist without my permission.

She draws a breath.

The space between us narrows, degree by degree, farther than a waltz requires.

I should have stepped back when the music slowed.

I don't.

“You're doing well,” I say.

“Liar.”

She's smiling. The performance smile she's worn all night has disappeared. This one reaches her eyes.

The music ends.

Neither of us moves immediately.

An hour before we leave, Matteo finds me at the edge of the gallery near the balcony doors. His voice stays between us.

“The Falcone table wants a word.”

I glance past him.

Five men sit at a private table near the balcony, drinks untouched, watching the gallery with the calculation of men deciding who might prove useful.

Falcone runs shipping out of three ports I need cooperation from by the end of the quarter. I could sit at that table myself. I have done it before. Each of those five men would fold their hands, agree to whatever I asked, and tell me nothing they actually think because they're too careful around me to slip.

That's the problem with being the most dangerous man in a room.

Nobody makes a mistake in front of you.

They might in front of someone they don't believe matters.

Half this room suspects Adeline is an arrangement rather than a romance. Falcone's table will suspect it hardest of all, because men like that don't believe in anything they can't leverage.

If one of them says something careless in front of a woman he assumes is decoration, I'll learn what he thinks he can get away with when I'm not watching.

I find her by the terrace doors, recovering from the dance.

“I need a task from you,” I say.

She searches my face for information. “What kind of task?”

“That table with five men. Get familiar and let them talk.”

“About what?”

“Whatever they want to. I'm not asking you to extract information. I'm asking you to be underestimated in a room where that's usually useful to me.”

Her brow lifts, as though I'm speaking another language.

“And if one of them says a thing he shouldn't?”

“Then I'll learn something I didn't an hour ago.”

She considers that, then nods, chin lifting the same way it did for the cameras outside.

“Okay.”

She asks nothing else. She only says, “Okay,” as if she's decided the answer doesn't change what she's about to do.

I watch her cross the gallery toward the balcony, midnight blue against marble.

The five men notice her immediately.

One straightens. Another looks her over. A third leans toward the man beside him and whispers.

I take a glass of wine from a passing tray and watch.