Selena Cole walked beside Marcus in a cream silk blouse, wearing the particular smug little smile of a woman who believed, with her whole chest, that she’d won something.
She’d won something.
Marcus slowed down just long enough to lean in close.
“Try not to cry too hard, Simone,” he murmured. “Some women just don’t know how to keep a man.”
Selena giggled behind her manicured hand.
I looked up from my phone, mid-PIN-change on card number seven.
“Some men don’t know how to read a bank statement,” I said.
His expression flickered. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to catch it and file it away for later, the way my father had taught me to notice things without ever letting my own face give away that I’d noticed them at all.
By eight-forty that evening, Marcus and Selena were seated in the Sapphire Room at Aurelia House, a private club downtown in Castlewood City where a single glass of champagne cost more than most people’s monthly car note.
Marcus had reserved the room using my old company membership, the one I’d forgotten to cancel in the chaos of the last six months.
He ordered imported oysters. A Wagyu tower. Two bottles of vintage Bordeaux. Diamond-dust cocktails nobody actually needed. A private violinist for Selena’s birthday, which, as it happened, wasn’t even for another two weeks.
