Chapter 1 - The Weight of the Table
The dining room of the Moretti estate was built to intimidate men who owned banks.
It was sixty feet long, paneled in dark, hand-carved walnut that had been imported from a monastery outside Florence in the late 1920s, and lit by a iron chandelier that held forty wax candles alongside soft electrical bulbs. At the center of the room sat a table cut from a single slab of solid mahogany. It was long enough to seat eighteen people comfortably, though tonight only three places were set.
Camille Brooks stood near the sideboard, adjusting her emerald wool pencil skirt with quiet, deliberate movements. She was thirty-two, curves generous and unapologetic, her posture straight as a plumb line. Around her neck hung a small, polished silver locket—her mother’s—resting against the cream silk of her blouse.
Lucian Moretti sat at the head of the table. He was thirty-six, six-foot-three, built like a lightweight heavyweight contender who still did his own roadwork before dawn. His hair was dark, trimmed short at the sides, and his gray eyes had the unnerving clarity of river ice.
To his right sat Nico, twenty-seven, leaning back in his chair with a glass of sparkling water, looking between his brother and Camille like a boy watching two stray dogs circle each other over a bone.
"He does not need to learn how to bow, Ms. Brooks," Lucian said. His voice was a low, resonant rumble that seemed to vibrating through the mahogany. "He needs to learn how to stop hugging donors who have net worths higher than the municipal budget of Evanston."
"It was an seventy-eight-year-old widow whose foundation just released four million dollars for the West Side youth center, Lucian," Nico interjected softly. "She looked like my grandmother."
"Our grandmother," Lucian said without looking at him, "once broke a man’s wrist with a brass candlestick because he reached across her plate for the salt. Do not use her to excuse your terrible boundaries."
Camille stepped forward, her heels making a sharp, clean click against the parquet floor. She picked up a silver salad fork from Lucian’s right side, turned it upside down, and set it back down half an inch to the left of the fish knife.
Lucian watched her fingers. "That was correct where it was."
"It was three millimeters out of alignment with the charger plate, Mr. Moretti," Camille said, her voice smooth, calm, and utterly lacking the deference he was accustomed to hearing from everyone in Chicago. "If you are going to enforce perfection on your family, your own table should not look like it was set by an exhausted waiter at a train station diner."
Nico snorted into his napkin.
Lucian’s eyes dragged up from the silverware to Camille’s face. He looked at her dark hair, pinned up in a professional French twist, the curve of her throat, and the absolute lack of fear in her hazel eyes.
"You have been in my home for forty-five minutes," Lucian said quietly. "In that time, you have corrected my tie, critiqued my choice of mineral water, and told my security chief that his shoulder holster was pulling the drape of his suit jacket to the left."
"It was," Marco Bell growled from his position by the double doors, his hand instinctively twitching toward his left armpit.
"It still is," Camille added without looking back at Marco. "If you buy bespoke suits from Savile Row tailor, Mr. Bell, you should ask him to build a holster pocket into the lining rather than wearing a leather harness like a nineteen-eighties television detective."
Marco looked down at his chest, his mouth tightening.
Nico threw his hands up in the air. "I love her. Lucian, please double her fee. I want her to stay forever."
Lucian did not move. His hands rested flat on the polished table—broad, long-fingered hands with a thin white scar running across the back of his left knuckles. "I hired you, Ms. Brooks, because the Moretti Foundation is about to host two hundred of the most influential political and corporate figures in the Midwest. My brother is the face of that foundation. If he makes a fool of himself at the gala on Saturday, it affects three thousand families who depend on those scholarships."
"Your brother is not going to make a fool of himself," Camille said, taking two steps toward Lucian’s chair until she was standing within arm's reach of him. "Nico has warmth. He has instinct. He knows how to make an eighty-year-old widow feel like she is the only person in the ballroom."
She leaned down slightly, resting one hand on the back of Nico’s chair, her eyes locked onto Lucian’s.
"Your problem, Mr. Moretti, is that you think etiquette is a weapon you use to control people. You think it is armor."
"It is armor," Lucian said softly.
"No," Camille said. "It is hospitality. It is making other people feel comfortable in your presence. And right now, sitting next to you feels like waiting for a deposition in a federal courthouse."
Silence descended on the room like a heavy woolen blanket.
The three security guards standing near the doors stopped shifting their feet. Marco held his breath.
Lucian slowly stood up. He towered over her, his broad chest filling her field of vision, the scent of cedarwood, leather, and tobacco drifting from his jacket. He was a man who commanded thousands of men, whose word was law from the docks of Lake Michigan to the warehouses of Cicero.
"You are very bold for a woman whose business relies on my recommendation," Lucian murmured, stepping closer until the toes of his hand-made Italian oxfords were inches from her leather pumps.
Camille did not step back. She tilted her head up, her chin high, looking him straight in the gray depth of his eyes.
May you like
"I don't rely on your recommendation, Mr. Moretti," she said, her voice dropping into a intimate, lethal softness. "I rely on my reputation. And if you want your gala to succeed, you are going to sit back down, take off that ridiculous scowl, and let me teach you how to look like a man who actually enjoys being alive."
Nico’s chair scraped loudly against the floor as he pushed back, rising to his feet with a massive grin. "I'll be in the library," he announced cheerfully. "I think I need to read a book on basic first aid before tomorrow morning."
