Chapter 63 The Gala Part Two

Chapter 63 The Gala Part Two
Aria's POV

Bruno moved first.

She'd known he would. Her father had never waited for anything to come to him in his life. He identified what he wanted and moved toward it with the patient certainty of someone who'd never seriously considered the possibility of being refused.

He crossed the room toward her and she watched him come and kept her expression exactly where she needed it to be.

Warm. Composed. A daughter was pleased to see her father at a public event.

She'd gotten better at this than she wanted to be.

"Aria." He kissed both her cheeks. His cologne the same as it had always been, the smell of her entire childhood. "You look extraordinary."

"Thank you, Papa."

"I didn't know you'd be here tonight." He said it lightly but his eyes were doing what they always did now, that quick assessment that she'd finally learned to recognise for what it was.

"The nomination," she said. "Sant'Angelo sent me as their representative."

"Of course." Genuine pride moved through his expression. Whatever else Bruno Salvini was, the pride in his daughter had never felt performed. "The Promising Young Physician award. I heard about that. I'm so proud of you."

"Thank you."

He glanced around the room with the ease of someone who knew exactly where everything was at all times. She'd thought that was just how he was. Now she understood it as something learned and deliberate.

"Are you here alone?" he asked.

"With Elena. Dr. Russo." She gestured vaguely. "She's around somewhere."

"Good." He took a glass of champagne from a passing tray. "We should have dinner this week. Properly. Just us." His voice was easy. Reasonable. The voice of a father suggesting something normal. "It's been too long since we've had real time together."

"I'll check my schedule," she said.

Which meant no and they both knew it and neither of them said so.

Bruno looked at her for a moment with the expression she'd started noticing more recently, the one underneath the performance that she thought might be the closest thing to his actual face. Something that looked like sadness, or regret, or the particular grief of someone watching a door close that they'd left open too long.

"I love you," he said. Quietly. Not for the room. Just for her.

"I know, Papa."

He nodded once, accepting the answer for what it was, and moved away with the smooth grace of a man who'd been managing exits his entire life.

Aria breathed.

Turned her champagne glass in her hands.

"Well handled."

Dante's voice, close, arriving from her left without her hearing him approach.

She didn't turn immediately. "You weren't supposed to be here."

"I know."

"We discussed this."

"We did." He came to stand beside her, not quite shoulder to shoulder, appropriate distance for a public space, but close enough. "I came anyway."

"I noticed." She looked at him sideways. "How did you even get in?"

"I know people."

"Of course you do." She looked back at the room. At Bruno now in conversation with a man she didn't recognise, animated and warm and completely in his element. "My father almost saw you."

"He did see me." Dante's voice was even. "He chose not to acknowledge it. Which tells you something about where his head is tonight."

She thought about that.

Bruno sees Dante across a room full of witnesses and chooses not to make a scene. Choosing patience. Which meant he was planning something, or waiting for something, or both.

"Why are you actually here," she said.

A pause.

"Because it matters," he said. "What you've built. What is tonight? I wanted to see it."

She looked at him then. At his face in the hotel's warm light, which was honest in the way it sometimes was when he stopped managing his expression.

"That's surprisingly simple," she said.

"Most true things are."

They stood side by side and watched the room and she was aware of the specific strangeness of this, standing next to Dante at a black-tie medical gala with her father thirty meters away and an award ceremony in an hour and the entire complicated architecture of the past months compressed into this one room.

His hand found the small of her back.

Light. Barely there. Through the fabric of her dress, just warmth and presence.

"People will see," she said.

"Your father already has surveillance photos of us from weeks ago. Discretion at this point is an aesthetic choice rather than a practical one."

She laughed despite herself. "That's a terrible argument."

"It's accurate."

"Accurate and terrible aren't mutually exclusive."

"No," he agreed. "They're not."

Across the room Bruno glanced over. His eyes moved from Aria to Dante and stayed there for exactly three seconds before moving away.

Dante didn't move. Didn't acknowledge it. Just stood with his hand at her back and his champagne glass and the particular stillness of someone who had waited twenty years for various things and had got quite good at waiting.

Bruno looked away first.

Three seconds and then away.

Aria felt Dante register it without any outward sign that he'd noticed.

"He looked away first," she said quietly.

"Yes."

"Is that significant?"

"In certain contexts," Dante said, "yes."

She turned to look at him properly. At the line of his jaw. The way he was watching her father across the room with the control of someone who had rehearsed this specific situation in their head many times.

"Are you okay," she said.

He looked at her. Something shifted in his expression. Not the controlled version. The underneath one.

"Ask me after the ceremony," he said.

She nodded.

"Dr. Salvini." Dr. Marchese appeared at her elbow. "They're asking nominees to gather near the stage. It's almost time."

Aria looked at Dante.

He looked at her.

"Go," he said. Quietly. "This is yours."

She handed him her champagne glass without thinking about it. He took it without making anything of the gesture.

She followed Marchese toward the stage area, feeling the room shift around her as she moved through it, people noticing the nominee walking through, that particular ripple of attention that she'd never quite got used to.

She glanced back once.

Dante was standing where she'd left him, her champagne glass in one hand and his in the other, watching her cross the room with the expression she didn't have a full name for yet.

Bruno was watching too, from the other side.

Two men watching her walk toward something she'd built entirely without either of them.

She faced forward.

Keep walking.