Chapter 4 Getting to know

Rosalind found me the next evening in my room, already dressed for a dinner I hadn’t agreed to attend, which told me everything about how much my opinion had factored into the planning. 

She didn’t bother knocking. She never did.

“You’re not wearing that,” she said, eyeing the jeans I’d intentionally put on that morning, purely to make a point nobody in this house seemed interested in receiving.

“I’m not wearing anything, actually, because I’m not going.”

“Kimora.” She sighed the way she always did right before she pulled out whatever card she’d been saving. “Bianca went to see him this afternoon. To apologize, on the family’s behalf, for the... confusion.”

“Good for Bianca.”

“He grabbed her wrist,” Rosalind said, and something in her voice finally cracked out of that honeyed calm, just for a second, just enough that I actually looked up at her properly for the first time since she’d walked in. “Hard enough to bruise. Because she was five minutes late.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

“She’s terrified,” Rosalind continued, quieter now. “She cried the entire way home. And I know you and your sister aren’t close, I know exactly what you think of her, but she is twenty-two years old and she has never had to survive anything in her life, Kimora. Not the way you have.” She said it plainly, without the performance she usually wrapped everything in, and that was somehow worse, the honesty landing harder than the manipulation ever had. “If you refuse, he doesn’t simply let the arrangement go. He takes it as an insult, and men like Vittorio don’t absorb insults quietly. It comes back on this family one way or another. And if it isn’t you standing in that dress tonight, it’s going to be her.”

“That’s not my problem to solve,” I said, though it came out thinner than I wanted.

“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t. You’re right. You don’t owe her anything, and you certainly don’t owe me anything.” She held my gaze, and for once there wasn’t a single trace of that patronizing warmth in it. “But I’ve watched you your whole life do the thing none of us ever expected of you. Take the harder road because somebody smaller than you needed you to. So I’m not going to pretend I don’t know exactly which lever I’m pulling right now. I’m simply telling you the truth, and trusting you to do what you’re going to do with it regardless of what I want.”

I hated her a little in that moment, for knowing me well enough to aim that precisely.

“Fine,” I said finally, my voice flat, final, already exhausted by the shape of my own surrender. “I’ll go tonight. I’m not agreeing to anything yet. I’m going to dinner. That’s all this is.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Rosalind said, and had the decency, at least, not to smile about it.

I changed out of the jeans myself, alone, refusing the stylist Rosalind sent up twenty minutes later. 

Whatever this was going to cost me, i at least would be buttoning the dress myself in the mirror with hands that had finally, mercifully, stopped shaking, I would at least walk into it having dressed myself.

The car ride to the Moretti estate passed mostly in silence, my stepmother beside me chattering about seating arrangements like we were discussing anything other than the rest of my life, my father silent in the front seat, refusing, still, to look at either of us directly. 

I kept my eyes on the window, watching dark hedgerows and iron gates slide past, and thought about Bianca’s wrist, and wondered what exactly I was about to agree to, and for how long.

I had no idea yet just how much that particular question was about to change shape before the night was through.

Vittorio Moretti turned out to be shorter than the rumors had led me to expect, which felt like an oddly petty thing to notice given everything else I already knew about him, but there it was. 

He rose from his seat at the head of the table when I entered the room, his smile wide and practiced, the smile that had clearly closed a thousand deals and buried a few inconvenient people along the way, and extended a hand toward the empty chair beside his own like he was presenting me with a prize rather than gesturing me toward my own execution.

“Kimora,” he said, my name sitting strangely in his mouth, too familiar for two people who’d met exactly twice. “You look even lovelier than I remembered.”

“Funny,” I replied evenly, sliding into the chair with as much composure as I could fake. “I remember you mostly by the shoes I ruined. Red wine doesn’t come out of suede, apparently. I hope you’ve forgiven me.”

Something flickered across his face — not quite offense, not quite amusement, some emotion that told me he wasn’t entirely sure yet whether I was being charming or difficult, which suited me fine, since I wasn’t entirely sure either. “A memorable evening,” he said smoothly, resuming his seat. “Though I confess I remember you far more vividly than the shoes.”

“That’s a shame. The shoes had better manners.”

Rosalind, three seats down, made a small, strangled sound into her wine glass. My father didn’t look up from his plate at all. 

Vittorio, to his credit, let out a short laugh, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes, which had gone very still in a way that reminded me, uncomfortably, of the two men who’d kidnapped me days earlier — the specific stillness of a man deciding how much of your mouth he was willing to tolerate before deciding it wasn’t worth it anymore.

“You have spirit,” he said, reaching for his wine. “I like that in a woman. To a point.”

“Good thing I come with a return policy, then, in case I overshoot the point.”

“Kimora,” my father said quietly, a warning in his tone, the same warning he’d failed to give Rosalind two nights ago when it might have actually mattered.

“I’m simply making conversation,” I said, all wide-eyed innocence, reaching for my own glass. “Isn’t that what we’re here for? Getting to know one another? I find sarcasm builds intimacy remarkably quickly. It’s basically a personality test with worse consequences.”

Vittorio’s jaw tightened, just slightly, the smile staying fixed in place through what I was fairly sure was sheer force of will. “I understand this arrangement came as a surprise to you,” he said, his voice dropping into something more dangerous for how reasonable it sounded. “I can be patient with a woman finding her footing. I am considerably less patient with disrespect, however charmingly it’s delivered.”

“Noted,” I said, echoing, without quite meaning to, the word I’d used on someone else entirely different days earlier. “I’ll be sure to file my disrespect under a more flattering category going forward. Whimsy, maybe. Or spirited debate.”

“Kimora.” My father again, sharper now. 

I wanted to reply my father.. Vittorio wanted obedience. He wanted a frightened young woman grateful to have been rescued and eager to become his wife. Unfortunately for him, I had always coped with fear by talking too much, and the closer people came to intimidating me, the more my mouth seemed determined to sabotage everyone's evening. I reached for my wine just as the enormous dining room doors swung open sealing the chatter shut.