Dante
We didn’t speak crossing the marble. Her heels snapped like small gunshots; my hand stayed firm on her arm.
Valet. Doors. Leather. I slid in beside her and gave the driver one word. “Home.”
The partition hummed up. She kept her eyes on the window, jaw set. I watched the pulse in her throat.
“Say it,” I told her.
She laughed, a small, humorless sound. “Introduce me.”
“What?”
Her head snapped around, eyes vicious. “That’s what you didn’t do tonight. You let your little shadow sit at your elbow and pretend I didn’t exist. You danced. You smiled. You never once said the word fiancée.”
I let the beat hang, because power sits better in a pause. “It wasn’t the moment.”
“It was every moment,” she shot back. “You had a hundred chances to show me respect, and you took none.”
