Chapter 1 - The Blood Beneath the Burgundy Silk
Rocco Valente had learned to recognize danger in the smallest movements: a glass held too tightly, a doorway someone avoided, a familiar face that smiled half a second too late.
Yet the most frightening thing he had ever touched was the back of his wife's evening gown.
On the third turn of a Viennese waltz, his palm settled against burgundy silk and encountered a warm stiffness that should not have been there.
He drew his hand away beneath the glittering chandeliers of Chicago's Hartwell Hotel.
His fingertips were red.
Across the dance floor, three hundred and twenty guests continued applauding the orchestra, unaware that the woman they had admired all evening was bleeding while she danced.
Norah kept smiling.
At twenty-seven, with auburn hair pinned loosely against her neck and intelligent gray eyes, she had mastered the art of making other people comfortable.
She had greeted donors, remembered children's names, posed for photographs, and thanked people whose donations were supposed to fund Mercy Children's Hospital's burn unit.
The gala's announced goal was two million dollars.
The orchestra swelled.
Beyond the windows, snow descended over the city in large white flakes.
Beneath her lipstick, however, Norah's mouth had gone pale.
Her fingers were clamped around Rocco's shoulder as if she were fighting not to collapse.
"Don't stop," she murmured, never losing her smile.
"Laugh like I've told you something wonderful.
Please, Rocco.
Just ten more minutes."
He stared at her and felt something cold twist inside his chest.
"You're bleeding."
She met his gaze with an expression he had never seen before, not even when she had cared for injured children during her nursing years.
It was not simple fear of pain.
It was fear of what would happen if someone noticed.
"I know how much I'm bleeding," she whispered.
"I used to be a nurse.
I need you to trust me long enough to keep dancing."
Only three hours earlier, he had stepped off a plane from Palermo.
His uncle Vittorio had been buried beneath a hard blue Sicilian sky that morning.
Rocco had slept perhaps forty minutes during the return flight, and Aldo Ferraro had greeted him at O'Hare with a folder full of seating assignments and reassuring chatter about the mayor's schedule.
Aldo had been his consigliere for nearly two decades, the kind of man who could make an argument disappear under the warmth of a compliment.
Rocco had barely heard him.
He had wanted only to see Norah.
At the foot of the grand staircase, in that wine-colored gown, she had looked like the one bright thing left in the world.
Now he surveyed the room over her shoulder.
Aldermen and federal judges drank champagne beneath chandeliers that looked like floating palaces.
White roses surrounded the orchestra stage.
A waiter threaded between the tables carrying silver trays.
Sal Brandi, Rocco's oldest friend and driver, waited by the east doors, shoulders broad beneath a tuxedo he clearly disliked.
Aldo stood at the edge of the dance floor holding club soda.
His smile was mild, composed, and entirely appropriate.
Nothing in the room appeared unusual.
That was what made Norah's plea unbearable.
She believed somebody among those elegantly dressed people had the power to punish her for revealing what had happened.
"Tell me who hurt you," Rocco said.
Norah's eyes flicked toward a service corridor before returning to his.
"You need to listen before you act.
I cannot have you behaving like the man everyone thinks you are."
He understood the accusation.
For twelve years he had directed a family whose respectable holdings had grown out of violent, corrupt work.
His reputation could silence a ballroom.
He had promised Norah that their marriage would belong to a different future.
She had made him believe such a future was possible.
And now someone had hurt her under his own name, at a charity event the family sponsored.
He stopped dancing.
He raised his bloodied right hand and cut the air once.
The conductor, who had played Valente weddings and funerals for twenty years, froze.
The violins sagged into an ugly unfinished chord, then the crystal room fell silent.
Heads turned.
Norah closed her eyes.
"Oh, Rocco," she said, half in despair.
"You idiot."
He slipped one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her shoulders.
When he lifted her, she made a sharp, involuntary sound against his collar that nearly stripped away his control.
"Mrs. Valente is unwell," he announced, his voice carrying to the farthest tables.
"Dinner will continue.
Please enjoy the evening."
People moved aside without being asked.
He heard the scrape of a chair, somebody whispering his name, and a startled clink of glass.
He did not see Aldo advance one step and stop.
He did not notice the young waiter at the third table set down a tray and head too quickly toward the service corridor.
Norah did.
Through pain, she stared at the flesh-colored patch just above the waiter's right eyebrow.
"The waiter," she whispered.
"The one with the—" Her eyes fluttered and the sentence dissolved.
Sal reached the VIP parlor a moment behind them.
Rocco pushed through its heavy door and lowered Norah onto a velvet sofa beneath a dark landscape painting.
The room smelled of polished wood and expensive cigars.
"Close it," Rocco told Sal.
"Nobody comes through.
Not Aldo.
Nobody."
Sal looked at Norah, at the spreading stain on Rocco's cuff, and locked the door.
He took out his phone without waiting for another instruction.
Rocco knelt beside his wife.
His hands shook so badly that he pressed them against his knees before touching her again.
"Show me," he pleaded.
Norah rolled onto her side with an effort that brought tears to her eyes.
Her fingers found the tiny hooks at the back of her gown.
"There isn't time," she said.
"The man who did this has left the ballroom.
Whoever paid him is still here.
He watched you carry me out."
She pulled aside the silk.
Rocco saw a makeshift dressing darkened by blood against her lower back.
The sight gave his fear a shape.
Somewhere beyond the locked door a knock sounded three times.
"Rocco," Aldo called pleasantly.
"Open up.
I can help."
Norah seized her husband's sleeve.
May you like
The pleading in her eyes was more terrible than the wound.
"Whatever he says," she whispered, "do not let him choose our doctor."
