Chapter 1
The last folded chair had barely stopped sliding when Vittorio Greco knelt beside his son.
Nico sat in his wheelchair clutching the broken airplane against his small suit jacket.
One wing hung by a strip of glue.
Three donors stood near the grand piano. Two bodyguards remained beside the elevator. A young violinist who had been waiting to perform had backed against the wall with her instrument case held against her chest.
Everyone had seen enough.
Vittorio looked at Nico.
“Does anything hurt?”
Nico shook his head.
Then he touched his shoulder.
“Here.”
Bianca had pulled him hard enough to leave red marks beneath his jacket.
Vittorio’s attention shifted toward his sister.
Bianca had gotten back to her feet.
Owen was sitting among fallen acoustic frames with blood at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re both leaving,” Vittorio said.
Bianca stared at him.
“This is my event.”
“No.”
Vittorio stood.
“It was Claire’s event.”
For the first time that evening, Bianca’s expression changed for a reason that had nothing to do with being hit.
Claire Greco had been Vittorio’s wife.
Nico’s mother.
And until her death eighteen months earlier, the charity concert had been the centerpiece of the Greco Family Arts Foundation.
Bianca looked away.
Owen did not.
“She’s dead, Vittorio.”
Vittorio took one step toward him.
His attorney, Daniel Price, had just entered the foyer from the donor lounge.
“Vittorio.”
One word.
Enough.
Vittorio stopped.
Daniel had seen the end of the altercation.
He lowered his voice.
“Take Nico somewhere private. Now.”
Vittorio looked around at the donors.
The humiliation had already become public.
He wheeled Nico toward a backstage office.
Before they reached the hallway, the boy tugged his sleeve.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why did Uncle Owen say Mommy was trash?”
Vittorio stopped walking.
He had been so focused on what Bianca had done that he had almost missed the wording completely.
Claire had been gone for a year and a half.
Owen had barely spoken her name since the funeral.
Yet when anger stripped away his manners, the insult had been ready.
Not for Nico.
May you like
For Claire.
And Vittorio suddenly wanted to know how long it had been waiting there.
