She looked almost triumphant under the veneer of concern.

“Is something wrong, dear?” she asked, her voice pitched just a little too loud. “You look upset.”

There it was. The first line of the scene.

“I’m not upset,” I said. My voice surprised me. It wasn’t shaking. It wasn’t shrill. It was just… done. “The seating arrangement is very clear.”

A flicker passed through Shawn’s eyes—annoyance, then a flash of something that looked suspiciously like fear. He knew I’d seen it. The missing chair was only the last straw; the real damage had been done long before we landed in Rome.

I stepped back from the table, letting my hand fall from the bare patch of floor where a chair should have been.

“I’ll see myself out,” I said.

Someone laughed nervously. Someone else muttered my name like a warning. A waiter glanced at me, then at Marco, the maître d’, torn between the guest of honor’s power and mine.

I turned and walked away.

The views from Aroma’s rooftop terrace were everything I’d promised Eleanor they would be—the Coliseum bathed in amber light, the city stretching out in soft, honeyed layers. I didn’t look back to take it in. I’d memorized every angle hours earlier when I’d done my final walkthrough.

I walked past the other diners, past the bar, past the discreetly stationed staff I’d charmed and directed throughout the day. No one tried to stop me. Perhaps they assumed I’d be back. Perhaps they thought I was going to the restroom to cry…

PART 2 

Not when I pushed open the heavy glass doors and stepped into the hallway.

Not in the elevator, where my blurred reflection stared back at me in the brass panel.

Not when the doors slid open to the lobby and I walked past the display of expensive wines I’d personally selected for tonight’s pairing.

The humiliation burned. It was a hot, bright, almost physical pain under my sternum. But somewhere beneath it, under the hurt and the anger and the disbelief, something very cold and very clear was crystallizing.

By the time I stepped out onto the cobblestone street outside the restaurant, that cold clarity had taken over.

Across the narrow street, a small café clung to the corner like it had been there for a hundred years and refused to move. A single free table sat under a striped awning, just far enough away that I could see the rooftop of Aroma but not hear the conversations.

I crossed over, heels tapping like punctuation.

“Un espresso,” I told the waiter, as if I hadn’t just walked out of a Michelin-starred restaurant where my entire marriage had been laid out like a carcass.

He nodded, wrote nothing down, and disappeared inside.

I sat, smoothed the skirt of my gown, and pulled my phone from my clutch.