The room doesn't change.
People are still talking, still clinking glasses, still doing all the things people do at expensive dinners. Nobody stops. Nobody looks over. The moment is completely invisible to everyone in that room except the three of us.
But something shifts.
Dominic goes from still to something I don't have a word for yet. Not angry. Beyond angry. The kind of thing that happens before anger, underneath it, the place anger comes from. I feel it more than I see it, like a change in temperature beside me.
I put my hand on his arm.
Not because I planned to. Because it was instinct, the same instinct that makes me step between a frightened patient and a loud orderly before anything can escalate. I feel the muscle under my palm and it is locked tight as stone.
I look at Aldri
