Page 175 of Brutal Vows

Massimo’s face turns red. A vein in his temple throbs. He snaps, “Bullshit.”

My smile grows wider. “Is it? I guess time will tell. But there’s one thing we both know for sure, and it’s that you’ve always underestimated me.”

I hold his infuriated stare for a beat before I turn my back and walk away, leaving him alone at the table.

FORTY-ONE

REY

PARIS

SEPTEMBER

What the fuckedy-fuck isthatthing?”

“It’s called haute couture, Riley.”

“If ‘haute couture’ is code for garish and ridiculous, then I get it, Hollywood. Seriously, where in the world could you go out in public wearing a giant balloon dress? Unless there’s a flood, then I suppose that hideous plastic polka-dot concoction could be super great as a floatation device.”

Sloane sighs. “I see living in the wilds of a Russian forest has done nothing to elevate your sense of style.”

Riley snorts and looks down at Sloane’s skirt. “This from a woman who thinks hot-pink tulle miniskirts covered in sequins and bows is the height of fashion.”

“Don’t you dare diss Betsey Johnson! And couture is magical, Smalls. It’s wearable art.”

“It’s lame is what it is. Can we leave now? I’m starving.”

We’re sitting in the second row of seats at the Fendi runway show, right behind Victoria Beckham. To my left is Nat, the black-haired beauty engaged to the head of the Bratva in the U.S.To my right are Sloane and her younger sister, Riley, arguing the merits, or lack thereof, of French couture.

They bicker constantly, but the love between them is obvious. Over the past three days since we arrived in Paris, they’ve fought as much as they’ve hugged each other.

We watch the final model strut down the runway, then stand and clap with the rest of the audience when the show is over and the designer walks out to thunderous applause. Then we make our way through the crowd, headed to the after-party at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

We’re followed by no fewer than two dozen bodyguards.

Armed and eagle-eyed, they’re spread out across the room, moving through the well-dressed patrons like sharks through water. The protection was a nonnegotiable condition all our men insisted upon, though not the only one. The list was long.

A girls’ trip to Paris is much more than a simple getaway when the “girls” belong to four of the most powerful, dangerous men in organized crime.

Men who hate each other.

They probably hate it even more that there’s no stopping us once our minds are made up.

But all it took was a single conference call between the four of us to convince us that a girls’ trip was exactly what we needed. If these men of ours are going to be at each other’s throats for the next forty years, we’ll be the glue that holds this shit show together.

And we’re bonding the glue in Paris, buying haute couture and eating haute cuisine.

Nobody ever said politics had to be conducted in dreary surroundings.

Chatting about the show, we travel to the museum in a convoy of armored SUVs with blacked-out windows. We enter through a private elevator in the back of the building. Once we’re inside,the bodyguards spread out again, keeping their predatory gazes trained for any hint of danger.

The after-party is held in the nave of the museum, an elegant three-story space of carved arches, white marble columns, and glossy marble floors. Displays of mannequins clad in designer frocks are clustered on raised platforms. The walls glow with purple washes of light. Uniformed waiters pass champagne and canapés on silver trays. I spot four celebrities within the first five minutes of our arrival.

We gather around a tall cocktail table draped in linen at one end of the room and talk, eat, and people watch as more guests arrive.

Until Riley says suddenly, “Uh-oh.”

Chewing on a pear-and-gouda tartlet, Nat says, “What’s wrong?”