The front door creaks open, and a hurricane in platform heels and glitter storms in. “Knock knock, bitches,” Vera sings, spinning in the doorway like a one-woman fashion show with her blazer sliding off one shoulder. Just seeing her pulls a laugh out of me. She is always chaos wrapped in highlighter and sass.
Massimo groans from the couch. “Jesus. Here we go.”
“Don’t act like you don’t love me, Mass,” Vera says sweetly, blowing him a kiss before flopping down beside me and kicking her shoes off. “Hey, boys. Hey, big bad Dante.”
Dante doesn’t even look up, but his silence hums in the space between us. That quiet gravity that makes every molecule in the room adjust to him.
“You’re drinking without me?” Vera whispers in my ear, pretending to clutch the pearls she is not wearing. “Rude.”
