Page 186 of Ricardo

I have spent Dante’s life protecting him from his mother’s choices.

I wonder, for the first time, whether I also protected myself from what he would see in mine.

Chapter Twenty Five

Julia

I use one of the hotel suites to get ready because Mario arranged it for me.

The gala is downstairs in the ballroom, and I have spent too much of the past two weeks running between Conti Enterprises, the hotel, the printer, the florist, the sponsor coordinator, and Patrice’s increasingly terrifying spreadsheet to risk being late because of traffic or a broken zipper.

The suite gives me space to get ready. Space to breathe. Space to look at myself in the full-length mirror and remind myself that tonight I am here for two reasons.

I helped build this room from the ground up.

And I am attending it with Ricardo.

The second part still makes my stomach tighten.

The green dress Ricardo bought for me is tailored to perfection. Silk skims down my body instead of clinging, the neckline elegant enough for a gala and still low enough that I know exactly why he chose it. The color is one that I've previously avoided. It should be too much with my hair, too obvious, too bold.

It isn’t.

It makes my eyes look greener. My skin warmer. My freckled skin less like something I once tried to cover and more like something that belongs exactly where it is.

I stare at myself for a little longer before I leave the suite.

Then I pick up my clutch, my phone, and the small emergency folder Patrice made fun of me for carrying until it saved us twice this week, and I go downstairs.

By the time I reach the ballroom, the final catering staff are moving with precision around the perimeter. The white-jacketed bartenders are setting polished glasses in neat rows. The string quartet is tuning near the far side of the room.

Gold light spills from the chandeliers over the tables, the flowers, the raised platform where Mario will speak later, and the sponsor wall near the entrance, where every name has been placed with painful deliberation.

Nothing in this room is accidental.

The Conti Gala is not only a celebration of two years in Chicago. It is a public statement that Conti Enterprises is no longer new enough to doubt. Every politician, donor, civic board member, hospital trustee, developer, and well-dressed skeptic in this ballroom is here to watch the Contis become part of the city’s infrastructure.

Or to pretend they are not watching.

Either way, they came.

I stop beside the first table and check the cards again.

State Senator Halbrook is where he should be. Nora Whitcomb Farley is placed with the hospital foundation chair and the education committee donor who will be flattered to sit near her. Harriet Bloom is nowhere near Sybil Crane. Sybil has been given arts council people and a slightly better line of sight to the stage than Harriet, which should make her feel superior without giving in too much to her silly demands.

“Julia?”

I look up to find Patrice moving toward me with her headset tucked discreetly beneath her hair and a clipboard in one hand.

“You are supposed to be done working,” she says.

“I am almost done.”

“You're supposed to be done-done.”

“That was before the port board chair’s wife called to ask whether her table had sight lines to the stage.”

Patrice blinks. “Why?”