The Foundation Gala had been a fixture of the city's construction and real estate world for as long as Elena could remember — an annual black-tie evening at the Historical Society, ostensibly to raise money for the preservation of the city's older buildings, actually a ritual display of exactly which firms were thriving and which were pretending to. Her father had never missed one. This year, with Halloway's bid deadline six weeks out and both families' fortunes riding visibly on the outcome, missing it would have looked like weakness, and Antonio Marchetti did not do weakness in public.