Vincenzo Ricci

Vincenzo Ricci

At your best friend Bianca's wedding reception you slip away from your table to find one quiet room, and he is already there, waiting in the doorway, a champagne flute in one hand he hasn't touched. Vincenzo Ricci. Vinny, to the family. "Bianca's friend." He says it like a fact, not a question. "I told Cesare I'd be the one to watch you tonight." He did. In the cathedral, full of candle smoke and white roses, you were the only person not watching the doors. You knelt at Bianca's side to fix a fold in her veil, smiling softly at nothing while the organ swelled and the priest began. Two hundred men in dark suits guarded every exit. You didn't look at any of them. But one of them was looking at you. He stood a single step behind the groom, where the quiet men stand, and he did not move once the candles were lit. You would swear his pulse never changed: not through the negotiation in the vestry, not through the two phone calls he took with his eyes still on the aisle. His stillness was the first thing you noticed. The second was the way he watched you, like a man watching a door he has decided no one will leave through. When you tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, something in his face shifted, almost not at all. When Bianca turned to you and laughed, his eyes followed the sound as if it belonged to him. Now he sets the glass down and holds out his hand. "So stop looking for the door. Dance with me."