Be With Me: Chapter 1

My best friend’s engagement party was today, and I wasn’t invited.

I only found out because of a baffling text that landed on my phone about five minutes ago. I’d managed to read it three times before it vanished—deleted by sender.

Clearly, Fabi hadn’t meant to send it to me.

If I hadn’t been glued to my screen, trying to reschedule a fitting with one of my personal styling clients, I would’ve missed it. Instead, the words were imprinted in my memory, as if written in permanent ink.

“How close are you? Cosimo just got here for our pre-engagement party photoshoot, and I already want to shoot myself. Emotional support required. BTW, when you type the address into the app, it might take you to the wrong place. Here’s the pin with the exact location.”

I’m sorry, what? An engagement party?

Fabi hadn’t even told me she was engaged.

“You ready?” Jenny asked, her voice barely cutting through the crowd chanting Morales for mayor! Morales for mayor!

“Uh-huh.” My palm was clammy around the phone as I zoomed in on the pin.

It was in Scarsdale. Wasn’t that where Fabi’s brother lived? The drive from here to there would take a half hour. I was scheduled to stay until the end of Dad’s rally, but there was no way. As soon as I wrapped up my speech, I was out of here. Fabi and I needed to talk. Face-to-face.

“You look a bit flushed,” Jenny said.

“I’m fine,” I lied, pretending my mind wasn’t whirring at an alarming speed as I tried to process that text and what it implied. Fabi and I were best friends. Why would she hide the fact that she got engaged from me?

Engaged to Cosimo. Her mysterious long-distance boyfriend. Just weeks after first mentioning him, Fabi had dropped a bomb. She was quitting her dream job at the UN in Geneva and moving back to New York to be closer to him. A man she’d only just met. A man she’d barely told me a word about.

Like any good friend, I’d asked questions. Lots of them. I’d wanted to make sure she’d really thought this huge decision through.

Nice one, Mia. You probably came off as unsupportive. Maybe you’d offended her.

I rolled my lips together. Did I? Was that it?

It had been three weeks since she returned to New York, and we still hadn’t seen each other even though we’d always dreamed of living in the same city again.

There’d been plenty of excuses—we were both insanely busy. Her with settling back in, and me with the never-ending demands of the campaign.

But what if she was just avoiding me?

Crap.

Heat crept up the back of my neck. This was a nightmare. I hated upsetting people. Especially those closest to me.

“If you elect me as the mayor of this great city, I promise to dismantle the organized crime families that have plagued our community for far too long.” My dad’s voice boomed over the speakers, so loud I could feel it vibrating inside my chest.

I glanced up at the stage and exhaled. It was almost my turn. I didn’t want to get up there right now—I rarely did—but skipping my speech wasn’t an option. Jenny was already going to scold me when I asked to leave early. She was one of my dad’s assistants. As my de facto boss, she controlled my calendar.

Dad slammed his hands against the podium. “The lawless mobsters and their cronies will be put behind bars.”

“Get them off our streets!” someone shouted from amongst the crowd.

“We will make New York a safer place for our children. That is my promise to you, and I am a man of my word.”

My dad was a powerful orator. He knew how to hold his audience captive, how to win them over with his rhetoric and his charisma.

Me? Not so much. I preferred to stay in the background. To let other people shine.

Getting shoved into the spotlight this year hadn’t been fun. But there was no one else who could take my place. My stepmom would love to be here—in theory. But since her stroke, she was too self-conscious to go out in public like this.

“Thank you, thank you.” Dad beamed at the audience. “Now, I have a special guest I’d like to bring on stage. My beautiful, talented daughter, Mia. Can you please help me welcome her?”

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Jenny nudged my back. “Just read the teleprompter,” she whispered, as if I needed the reminder.

That teleprompter was quite literally my lifeline. Without it, I’d be spewing nonsense in front of everyone, especially right now when I was anything but present or focused.

I took a deep breath and jumped right into it. My father was born in New York to a French mother and a Mexican father. When he was twelve, he lost his older brother—my uncle—in a shootout, caught in the crossfire of two warring factions of the Ferraro family.

An innocent bystander. Wrong place, wrong time.

After my granddad died, my dad took over the family business. But he always dreamed of making this city a place where no one else would suffer the way our family had. So at fifty-five, he sold the business and decided to run for mayor—to honor his brother’s memory by fighting for justice, safety, and hope.

I recited the words but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t stop thinking about Fabi and the apology I was starting to think I owed her.

Dad returned to the stage when I finished and tugged me into a hug. “You did great, cariño.”

I squeezed him back. “I love you, Dad.”

He pulled back and smiled at me before returning to the podium to welcome his next guest.

He didn’t say it back.

He’s just distracted.

I pushed aside that brittle, needy feeling inside of me and walked off stage to where Jenny stood. The situation with Fabi was making me way too sensitive.

“Well done,” Jenny said, patting me on the arm.

“I’ve got to go,” I said to her.

Her brow furrowed as I handed her my ID badge. “Go? Where? You’re booked until seven.”

“I know. But I have something important. And you don’t need me here anymore, not really.”

“What’s so important?”

“It’s my friend’s engagement party.” I grabbed my purse and slung it over my shoulder.

She frowned. “That’s not on your calendar.”

Believe me, I’m aware. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, but I totally forgot to add it.”

“Which friend?”

“Fabi Castellano.”

Jenny sighed, looking irked. “Fine. Just don’t let this happen again, all right? You know we run a tight ship. Give me a heads-up next time.”

“I will.”

I rushed out of the venue and flagged down a taxi. A warm, late-August breeze pulled on the strands of my hair as I tugged open the door and climbed into the back seat.

The cab inched its way through Manhattan, the driver honking impatiently at the cars cutting him off, while suicidal bikers swerved around us.

I closed my eyes and massaged my temples.

It was a bit nuts to just show up at this thing when I was apparently not wanted there, but if Fabi was mad at me, why hadn’t she just talked to me about it? Keeping her engagement a secret in response to something I’d said seemed like a huge overreaction. It just didn’t make sense.

And what about Nina and Zo? Fabi had to have told them about this. So why haven’t they said anything to me?

The four of us didn’t have secrets from each other.

At least, that’s what I’d thought.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling into a neighborhood. This was a wealthy area, full of sprawling estates and huge homes—exactly the kind of place I’d expect Fabi’s family to live.

I didn’t know much about them, but Valais Academy, the Swiss boarding school where Fabi, Nina, Zo, and I met, had cost a hundred grand a year. Unless you were a genius like Zo, who got a full-ride scholarship, your family had to be rich to afford that kind of education.

We turned onto the driveway that ended in front of a grand Colonial-style mansion with imposing white columns flanking the double front doors.

The gate was open, the security booth empty. The taxi driver paused for a moment as if giving someone a chance to stop us, but when no one appeared, he drove through the gate.

I pulled my phone out of my purse and shot off a text.

Fabi’s response was immediate.

I sent her a photo of the facade. Thanking the taxi driver, I slipped out of the car and started toward the front door. Music and laughter drifted from the backyard—it sounded like the party was in full-swing.

I braced myself.

This was going to awkward, but it needed to happen. I wasn’t trying to ruin her party. I just couldn’t let our friendship fall apart over some misunderstanding.

Fabi and I weren’t teenagers anymore. We didn’t text every hour or get together for weekly sleepovers in our dorm like we’d used to back at school. But for two twenty-five-year-olds who up until three weeks ago had spent years living on different continents, we were still close. Really close.

You sure about that? Maybe you mean a lot less to her than you think.

My chest squeezed. No, I wasn’t going to go there. If I dipped my toe into the vast pool of my insecurities, it would only make the situation worse.

All I planned to do was apologize for being skeptical about her boyfriend—I mean, fiancé—and explain that I was only trying to watch out for her. If they were head over heels and wanted to move fast—fine. As long as she was happy.

If after hearing me out she still didn’t want me here, I’d leave.

I was halfway up the walkway when⁠—

“Mia! What the HELL!?” Fabi sprinted along a path to the side of the house, her heels clicking against the pavement, her thick curls bouncing wildly, her cocktail dress hitched in her fists.

Hurt sliced through me. Was she really this upset that I’d shown up? I opened my mouth to explain⁠—

“Miss Messero,” a voice called out. “Everything okay?”

Fabi froze a few feet from me, her face losing its color. She gulped and glanced over her shoulder at a man in a suit with a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. He stood at the end of the path where Fabi had just come down.

“Yes! Just greeting an old friend! I’ll be right back.”

Miss…Messero?

That wasn’t Fabi’s last name.

Unease took root, spreading like ice through my veins. All of the sudden, it felt like I was missing something. Something important.

“All right,” the man said, turning back.

She faced me again and pressed her index finger to her lips, signaling for me to stay quiet until the security guard left.

My pulse pounded against the side of my neck. “Fabi, what’s going on?”

“You’re not supposed to be here. How did you get this address?”

“I saw the text you sent.”

She shut her eyes, looking pained. “Shit. I hoped you wouldn’t.”

The weird thing was that she didn’t sound angry.

She sounded…kinda scared.

Alarm bells rang inside my head. “Why did that man call you by the wrong name?”

Her throat bobbed, but her eyes stayed closed. “He didn’t. My last name isn’t Castellano. It’s Messero.”

I frowned. Wait, but that’s⁠—

“My brother is Rafaele Messero,” she said, her voice breaking as she finally looked at me, “and my fiancé is Cosimo Ferraro.”

My heart dropped all the way to my toes.

“Messero and Ferraro,” I echoed as my brain scrambled to make sense of what she was saying.

Fabi nodded.

I swallowed. Hard. “Your family is involved with the mob.”

“No, Mia. My family is the mob.”