“Perhaps you have experienced something similar?” She knew that three years earlier he had been arrested in America on some technicality involving his shipping empire, and grainy photographs of him being fingerprinted had appeared in the press. It must have been humiliating.

He leaned closer, and she could smell a sweet hay scent that was probably explained by the cigar protruding from his top pocket. “There’s a world of difference between us. To get where I am took nothing more than pigheadedness. But you—you clearly have a gift from the gods.”

“I work quite hard too, Mr. Onassis.” That was an understatement. Maria memorized libretti, practiced all afternoon, and, if she didn’t have a performance in the evening, she read opera scores in bed till the early hours. Music was her life. Attending parties like these was a rarity.

“Call me Aristotle. Please.” He touched her arm, just above the elbow, where her glove stopped and bare flesh was exposed. “So, when will I come to hear you sing? You be my guide.”

She smiled. “I’ll let you know when I am singing in a concert hall with particularly comfortable seats. Maybe you should bring your own pillow.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, his hand still resting on her arm.

He was flirting, with her husband just inches away. Maria usually had no time for the directors and fellow performers who made advances, but this was innocent fun and she was enjoying herself. “How can I believe you?” she teased. “Don’t they say you should never trust a sailor?”

“My friends can trust me with their lives, my enemies can trust that I have a Greek appetite for revenge—so I suppose that makes me trustworthy.” His eyes were flecked with gold, she noticed. Shrewd eyes.

“And I? Do you think I should trust you?” she asked.

“If I make you a promise, I will always keep it,” he told her, serious now. “You can trust in that.”

Those words stuck in her head long afterward.

Chapter 2

Venice

September 4, 1957

The morning after Elsa’s party, Maria awoke to find a note slipped under the door of their suite asking if she and Battista would join Aristotle and Tina Onassis for lunch in Harry’s Bar at one o’clock. She stretched and looked at the ormolu clock on the mantel: it was almost twelve. She generally preferred to ease herself into the day with a scented bath followed by a leisurely breakfast, but something about Aristotle had piqued her curiosity. She’d expected the world’s richest man to be serious and money obsessed, but instead he seemed fun.

“Battista!” she called. Her husband was reading a newspaper on a sunny balcony that overlooked the Grand Canal. “We’re going for lunch in an hour.”