Champagne flutes caught the light everywhere she looked.
Of course, it was champagne.
At parties like this one—high up in the penthouse of Moretti Tower, where the city spread out below as it owed you something—nobody drank anything else.
Everyone pretended the bubbles made them look richer, wittier, happier than they actually felt.
Sixty or so guests milled around the glass-walled space, doing the usual loop: sip, whisper gossip, glance around to see who might be watching.
The Atlanta skyline glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, cool and distant, like it knew all their secrets and didn’t care.
Up here, you could fool yourself into thinking you were untouchable.
The city just blinked back, indifferent.
The DJ thumped out a beat designed to drown out real conversation.
Waiters slipped through the crowd with trays of more champagne, fake smiles locked in place, eyes tired from too many nights like this one.
The whispers kept circling back to the same person.
The man everyone had come to see.
Giovanni Aidan Moretti.