Valentina's POV
The moment arrived the way the important ones always did, not announced, not dramatic, simply there, like a door that had been standing in the wall all along and had finally swung open.
Senator Varga moved first.
I had been tracking him for forty minutes, learning the rhythm of his circulation through the room, the particular orbit he maintained around Enzo's gravitational pull without ever appearing to be in it.
He was good at this, the practiced distance of a man who understood that proximity was its own kind of evidence. But the champagne had been flowing for two hours and the wedding was in full swing and the room had the quality it always developed at this stage of an evening, that loosening, that collective decision to let the occasion be what it advertised itself as.
He moved toward the alcove near the east corridor.
The port commissioner was already there.
