The private room on the third floor of the Golden City Hotel buzzed with laughter and clinking glasses, as though the cruelty of earlier moments had never happened. Expensive wine flowed freely. Plates of roasted meat were passed around the long table. Yet no matter how much the conversation drifted, it always found its way back to one name.
Dante Virelli.
“Honestly,” Zain Warren scoffed, leaning back in his chair with a lazy swirl of his wine, “I don’t even understand why Emilia brought him here. The Virelli family was already finished years ago.”
A classmate laughed. “Finished is putting it kindly. Disgraced sounds better.”
Another leaned in, lowering his voice as if sharing f*******n gossip. “I heard he wasn’t just bankrupt. He went to prison. Something about violence. Maybe fraud.
