Nero: Made Men novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Gala

"She'll come if she wants to," Nero said.

"Don Aldo wants her there," Sal said.

"Then Don Aldo can ask her himself."

Sal's eyes slid up the stairs to me again, slowly, and stayed there.

"He will," he said, and went down to the street.

On Saturday I put on the only black dress I owned, from a thrift store in Dundalk.

Then I went to the Harlow trustees' gala on Nero's arm.

The ballroom of the Belvedere Hotel glittered with chandeliers and silver trays.

Every donor Harlow had ever sent a letter to was in it.

I'd decided the night before what I was going to do, and I hadn't told him.

Four days earlier, in the loft, he had put a plastic bag on the kitchen counter.

"My driver went into the bay for it that first night," he said.

"A man in Fells Point got the data off it. I haven't looked."

It was Chantal's phone.

"Why give it to me?" I said.

"Because it's yours to use," Nero said. "Not mine."

I had looked.

There were nine hundred photographs on it, and the editing app.

There was the file of my face pasted on a stranger's body, with the date.

There was a group thread with her friends that began, Let's make her sorry she exists.

It was all there, with timestamps.

Now I carried it in a small black clutch.

Across the ballroom, under the biggest chandelier, a man with a silver tie pin was giving a speech.

"Harlow has always been a community of safety and respect," Chantal's father said into the microphone.

People clapped.

And at his side, in a pale blue gown and a smile, stood Chantal.

She had her chin up.

She was looking at me.

"I'll be right back," I told Nero.

"Mona."

"This is mine."

He let go of my arm.

I walked through the crowd to the headmistress, who was standing beside the chief of police, drinking white wine.

"Headmistress," I said. "I need five minutes, and I'd like the chief to hear it too."

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