Chapter 7 - The Memorial Dinner
October arrived in Chicago with a sharp, biting wind that stripped the maple trees along Lake Shore Drive down to bare, skeletal branches.
The North Tower was ablaze with light.
It was the night of the annual Salerno family memorial dinner—an obligatory, high-stakes gathering of every caporegime, syndicate leader, and political fixer in the Midwest. Four hundred guests in black tie crowded the grand ballroom, drinking champagne and trading nervous glances beneath the crystal chandeliers.
I stood at the top of the grand marble staircase, wearing a gown of deep emerald-green velvet that hugged my silhouette without apology. My hair was swept up into an elaborate chignon, held in place by diamond-encrusted pins that had belonged to Adrian’s grandmother.
Beside me stood Adrian. He wore a pristine tuxedo, his silver-streaked temples catching the overhead light, looking every bit the sovereign king of a brutal empire.
Below us, standing near the mahogany bar, were my parents.
Gerald Brennan looked shrunken in his ill-fitting rental tuxedo, his face pale and haggard. Beside him, Lorraine chain-smoked a slim Virginia Slim through a gold-plated holder, her eyes darting nervously toward the armed guards stationed by the exits.
They had not been invited. They had crashed the reception, hoping that public proximity to the Salerno name might save their rapidly disintegrating real estate portfolio from my father's creditors.
"Look at them," Adrian murmured, his hand resting lightly, possessively against the small of my back. "They still think you're the asset they traded for a three-million-dollar receipt."
"Let them," I said, my voice smooth and cold as glass. "People who spend their lives looking at price tags never notice when the store changes ownership."
We descended the staircase together. The ambient chatter in the grand ballroom died down instantly, cell phones lowering, champagne flutes pausing midway to lips, as the room took in the sight of the ruthless syndicate boss walking hand-in-hand with the woman the Outfit had written off as defective.
My father pushed through the crowd, his face flushed with desperate, humiliating false cheer.
"Adrian! My boy! And Talia, sweet girl!" Gerald babbled, thrusting his hand toward his son-in-law. "Wonderful turnout. Simply magnificent. I was telling Lorraine, we really must discuss the expansion of the southern rail terminals—"
Adrian did not take my father’s hand.
He didn't even slow his pace. He simply walked past Gerald Brennan as if my father were a coat rack standing in the hallway.
Lorraine let out a sharp, indrawn breath, her face turning the color of curdled milk.
I stopped for half a second, looking down at my mother from the height of the marble step.
May you like
"Mother," I said, my voice carrying clearly across the silent ballroom. "You dropped your ash on the carpet."
Without waiting for her reply, I turned and followed Adrian toward the head table, leaving the Brennans standing alone in the center of the room, surrounded by four hundred people who suddenly found the patterns on the ceiling remarkably fascinating.
