The event was Matteo's idea.
That should have been the first warning.
Matteo Ricci — Dante's cousin, thirty one years old, smile that arrived half a second too quickly — had been organising a quarterly gathering of Milan's business circle for three years. Legitimate on the surface. The kind of event where powerful people stood in expensive rooms drinking expensive wine and pretending the real conversations were not happening in corners.
Dante attended because not attending would communicate something he was not ready to communicate yet.
He brought Aria because Luca Marchetti would be there and Dante had decided three days ago that Luca Marchetti being anywhere near Aria without him present was not something he was prepared to permit.
He had not explained this reasoning to Aria.
She h
