The first course had arrived with the silent efficiency of servants trained to be invisible.
French onion soup. The scent of caramelized sweetness and aged gruyère curled through the air like a promise nobody at this table intended to keep. Crystal bowls caught the chandelier light, transforming broth into liquid amber. Silver spoons gleamed with the particular cruelty of wealth that wanted you to know exactly how much it had spent on cutlery.
Nobody was eating.
Jonathan held his spoon like a judge's gavel—suspended, waiting, the implement of a man about to deliver sentencing. Roxanne stared at her bowl as though it contained prophecy instead of soup, her voluptuous chest rising and falling with breaths she was trying very hard to control.
The midnight-blue fabric of her dress did nothing to conceal the swell of her breasts, the shadowed valley between them catching candlelight with each trembling inhale.
