Then she looked at him.
“You were trying to protect me.”
“Yes.”
“You did it terribly.”
“Yes.”
I almost laughed.
Grace did not.
“You made me feel small in a room full of people I wanted to respect me.”
Luca’s face lost whatever trace of amusement had been there.
“I know.”
“No.
You know now.
When you said it, you thought the result justified the method.”
He was silent.
Grace stepped closer.
“I may be young.
I may not attend the school you respect.
I may even be naive sometimes.
But you do not get to decide that humiliating me is acceptable because you know something I don’t.”
The feared man who had walked into the ballroom and made hundreds of people lower their voices simply stood there and took it.
Finally he said, “You’re right.”
Grace’s expression softened only slightly.
“I know.”
Then Luca turned toward me.
My hand still stung.
“I assume you have something to say too,” I said.
“I do.”
I waited.
“You should keep backups of those photographs.”
I stared at him.
Grace made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
I folded my arms.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
He looked directly at me.
“I should not have spoken to your sister the way I did.”
The apology was simple.
No excuse attached.
“And?” I asked.
His eyes flicked toward the mark on his cheek.
“You should not hit people.”
“That sounds less like an apology.”
“It was not part of the apology.”
Grace finally laughed.
The sound broke something open inside me.
Ten minutes earlier she had been standing white-faced beneath chandeliers while strangers watched her humiliation.
Now she was laughing again, shaky but real.
Luca glanced toward her.
For the first time, I saw what had been hidden beneath his cold entrance and brutal words.
Concern.
Not softness exactly.
But concern.
I wondered how long he had known those men were operating in rooms like this.
I wondered what history made them afraid of him, and what history made him recognize their methods so quickly.
I did not ask.
Some answers belonged to worlds I had no intention of entering.
