The room stayed silent long after Vivian's words faded, but it wasn't an empty silence. It was the silence of calculation, of observation, of a battlefield assembling itself in real time between three people who each had something to lose.
Vivian stepped back slowly, elegant and completely composed, as though walking into the mansion of the man she was supposed to have married and finding another woman standing beside him was simply an inconvenience she was already cataloguing. No anger, no visible jealousy, no dramatic confrontation. That was precisely what made her dangerous. Women who screamed revealed emotion. Vivian revealed strategy.
"You look tense," she said lightly, her eyes still fixed on me. "Relax. I'm not here to steal your seat." A faint smile touched her lips. "You were on
