Every Gorgeous Lie

Chapter 1: Family Logistics

The first lie Rafael ever told Beatriz was not really a lie. It was more of an aggressive understatement.

"I work in family logistics," he'd said on their third date, sitting across from her at a plastic table outside Bar do Toninho in Ouro Preto, sharing a plate of pastéis that cost twelve reais total. He'd said it the way someone might say "I work in insurance" or "I do something with computers" — vaguely, almost apologetically, as if the details would bore her.

Beatriz had nodded and moved on to more important questions, like whether he flossed regularly (he did not) and whether he'd ever had a root canal (also no, which she found suspicious in a man of thirty-one). She was a dentist. These things mattered.

That had been a year ago. In the twelve months since, Rafael Ferreira had proven himself to be the most uncomplicated boyfriend she'd ever had. He drove a ten-year-old Fiat Uno that smelled permanently of coffee. He wore the same three pairs of jeans in rotation. He cooked rice and beans on Sunday with the quiet competence of a man who had been feeding himself for years, and he laughed at her jokes — even the dental ones, which, she was self-aware enough to admit, were an acquired taste.

"You're like a cavity," she'd told him once, early on. "You snuck up on me, and now I can't ignore you."

He'd grinned. "That's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."

So when Rafael invited her to his sister's engagement party in São Paulo — "Just a family thing, nothing fancy" — Beatriz had packed a single carry-on with her nicest sundress, a pair of wedge sandals she'd bought on sale at a shopping center in Belo Horizonte, and a bottle of cachaça from her uncle's farm as a gift for the hosts.

The flight from Belo Horizonte to São Paulo was short. Rafael held her hand during takeoff and told her his family was "a lot" but that she'd be fine.

"Define 'a lot,'" she said.

"My mother is... intense. My father is friendly. My sister is great. You'll love Letícia."

"And they'll love me?"

He squeezed her hand. "They'll love you because I love you."

It was the first time he'd said it. Beatriz stared at him. He stared back, looking mildly horrified, as if the words had escaped from a holding cell he'd been carefully maintaining.

"I mean—" he started.

"No take-backs," she said.

He exhaled. "No take-backs."

They landed at Congonhas Airport. Beatriz expected a taxi. Instead, a man in a dark suit stood at arrivals holding a sign that read FERREIRA in elegant lettering.

"Is that for us?" she asked.

"My mother sent a car," Rafael said, with the tone of someone reporting a minor weather event.

The car was a black Mercedes. The driver opened the door for Beatriz with the solemnity of a butler in a period drama. She climbed in and found chilled sparkling water, linen napkins, and a small arrangement of orchids in a crystal vase mounted to the console.

"Rafael," she said carefully.

"Mm?"

"Is this a normal car for your family?"

"My mother likes to make an impression."

Beatriz looked at the orchids. She looked at the crystal vase. She looked at the driver, who was wearing actual driving gloves.

"What exactly does your family ship?" she asked.

"Everything," Rafael said. He was staring out the window. "They ship everything."

The drive took them through São Paulo's sprawling geometry of concrete and glass, past the Pinheiros River, into the Jardins district, where the buildings got taller and the streets got quieter and everything seemed to be made of marble or money. The Mercedes pulled up to a residential tower that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd been asked to build a monument to wealth and had taken the assignment personally.

A doorman in a uniform with gold buttons opened the car door. Another doorman held the lobby door. A third doorman — Beatriz was losing count of doormen — escorted them to a private elevator.

"The Ferreira residence is the penthouse," the third doorman said, pressing a button with a gloved finger.

"The penthouse," Beatriz repeated.

"The entire penthouse floor," the doorman clarified, as if she might have been confused about which portion of the penthouse the Ferreiras occupied.

The elevator opened directly into the apartment. Beatriz stepped out and stopped.

The space before her was not a home. It was a small country. Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed São Paulo's skyline in every direction, the city glittering in the early evening like a circuit board someone had tipped on its side. The living room alone could have contained her entire dental practice, the waiting room, and possibly the parking lot. A grand piano sat in one corner as casually as a coffee table. The art on the walls — she was fairly certain one piece was an actual Di Cavalcanti — was lit by individual spotlights.

And the people. There were at least two hundred people, all dressed in the kind of effortless elegance that costs a tremendous amount of effort and money. Waiters circulated with trays of champagne. A jazz quartet played in an alcove. Someone was laughing in a way that suggested they owned at least one yacht.

Beatriz looked down at her sundress from the Belo Horizonte sale rack. She looked at her wedge sandals. She looked at the bottle of homemade cachaça in her carry-on.

"Rafael," she said.

"Yes?"

"When you said 'family logistics'..."

He had the decency to look sheepish. "I may have undersold it slightly."

"Slightly." She gestured at the room. "This is like saying the Amazon is 'slightly damp.'"

Before he could respond, a woman materialized from the crowd with the gravitational certainty of a planet. She was tall, impeccably dressed in a midnight-blue gown that probably cost more than Beatriz's car, and her silver-streaked hair was swept up in a style that managed to look both effortless and architecturally complex. Her smile was warm. Her eyes were calculating.

"Rafael, meu filho," the woman said, kissing him on both cheeks. She turned to Beatriz with the appraising look of a jeweler examining a stone of uncertain provenance. "And you must be Beatriz."

"Mamãe," Rafael said, "this is Bia. Bia, this is my mother, Renata Ferreira."

Beatriz extended her hand. Renata took it with both of hers, holding it a beat too long, studying her.

"A dentist," Renata said, as if tasting the word. "How... practical."

"Someone has to keep Brazil smiling," Beatriz said.

Renata's left eyebrow rose approximately two millimeters. It was, Beatriz would later learn, the Renata Ferreira equivalent of a standing ovation.

"Come," Renata said, tucking Beatriz's arm through hers with practiced ease. "Let me introduce you to everyone."

And just like that, Beatriz was swept into the current.

The next hour was a blur of names and faces. There were cousins who ran banks, aunts who sat on charity boards, uncles who casually mentioned their vineyards in the Serra Gaúcha. Beatriz shook hands with a federal judge, a retired Formula One driver, and a woman who was introduced simply as "Dona Marília" with the reverence usually reserved for religious figures.

"Dona Marília owns most of Leblon," Rafael whispered.

"Most of the neighborhood?"

"Most of the real estate. It's a subtle difference."

Beatriz clutched her champagne glass like a life preserver.

Then she met Augusto Ferreira, Rafael's father, and the evening briefly improved. Augusto was a large, ruddy-faced man with a booming laugh and the disposition of a golden retriever who'd been given a credit card. He pumped Beatriz's hand enthusiastically.

"Beatriz! My friend! Rafael talks about you constantly. A dentist! Wonderful. I have a molar that's been giving me trouble — we should talk."

"Papai," Rafael said.

"What? She's a professional. Professionals like to be consulted." Augusto leaned closer to Beatriz. "It's the upper left. It hurts when I eat sweets."

"That could be several things," Beatriz said, instantly comfortable on familiar ground. "How long has it—"

"Not now," Rafael said, steering her away. "Please do not diagnose my father at the engagement party."

"He asked!"

"He also asks everyone he meets whether they want to see his vintage cars. It's a conversational trap."

Beatriz was about to argue when a young woman broke through the crowd and threw her arms around Rafael with the force of a small hurricane.

"You came!" the woman shrieked. "You actually came! I told Mamãe you'd come, and she said you wouldn't, and I bet her my emerald earrings, so you literally just made me money."

"Letícia," Rafael said, laughing, "this is Bia."

Letícia Ferreira was twenty-six, with her father's warmth and her mother's cheekbones. She grabbed Beatriz's hands.

"You're the dentist! From Ouro Preto! I've been dying to meet you. Rafael never brings anyone to anything. The fact that you're here means either he's serious or he's lost a bet, and either way I'm fascinated."

"He's serious," Beatriz said. "He told me he loved me on the plane."

Letícia screamed. Several nearby guests flinched. The jazz quartet briefly lost their rhythm.

"On the PLANE? Rafael, you romantic disaster, you told her on a PLANE?"

"It slipped out," Rafael muttered.

"It 'slipped out.' Incredible. Bia, we're going to be best friends. I've decided. Come meet Thiago — he's my fiancé, he's over there looking handsome and nervous, which is his default state."

Thiago Dumont turned out to be a tall, quiet man with kind eyes and the slightly dazed expression of someone who'd been caught in a Ferreira vortex and had simply stopped swimming against it. He shook Beatriz's hand gently.

"Welcome to the chaos," he said. "It doesn't get calmer."

"I'm starting to realize that," Beatriz said.

She looked across the room at Rafael, who was being cornered by an aunt with opinions. He caught her eye and mouthed "I'm sorry" with the exaggerated desperation of a man being held hostage.

Beatriz looked at the penthouse. She looked at the champagne in her hand, which probably cost more per bottle than her monthly electric bill. She looked at the Di Cavalcanti on the wall.

She took a very long sip of champagne.

"Family logistics," she muttered to herself. "Family logistics."