Valentina Salles returned to the Vasconcelos tower as if she had never been absent from it.
She arrived at ten in the morning wearing white silk, diamond earrings small enough to be tasteful and expensive enough to be noticed, and a smile trained by generations of women who understood that softness could be sharpened into a blade. The receptionist stood before Valentina had fully crossed the lobby. Security recognized her car. Assistants lowered their voices. Someone from public relations appeared with coffee she had not requested and fear she had earned.
Valentina accepted all of it as her natural weather.
For most of the city, she was the woman expected to marry Dante Vasconcelos. Not officially, not with a date, not with a ring displayed in a magazine spread, but with something stron
