Chapter 7 - The Question at Dinner
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The question hung in the air between us, heavy and fragile, like a piece of spun glass suspended over a stone floor.
I could have burned him with it right there.
I could have repeated every cruel, arrogant word he had spoken to his wealthy friends while holding up his gold band. I could have brought up the navy velvet box sitting behind two inches of hardened steel upstairs and thrown his hypocrisy back into his face.
Instead, I looked at him with the cool, unbothered curiosity one might reserve for a stranger asking for directions on the street.
"What makes you think that?" I asked softly.
Graham blinked, momentarily thrown off by my total lack of anger. An angry woman was a variable he knew how to manage; he had dealt with emotional outbursts, corporate lawsuits, and hostile board members for a decade. But this absolute, serene detachment was a terrain he had no map for.
"You didn't meet me at the door yesterday," Graham said, his voice rising slightly as he began listing the evidence. "You didn't put a note in my briefcase this morning. Martin said you didn't have anything to send over. And now you've removed the roses."
"Those are very small things, Graham," I replied, smoothing the front of my cream linen trousers.
"They aren't small to me!" he snapped, stepping closer, his hands gesturing between us. "They are... they are how things run around here! You've written a note for every major meeting I’ve had since I founded the firm!"
"And today you had your meeting without one," I pointed out gently. "And the firm didn't collapse, did it?"
Graham went rigid. His jaw worked silently as he struggled to find an answer that didn't expose how much he relied on something he had publicly dismissed as worthless.
"Why did you stop writing them, Elena?" he asked, his tone dropping into something almost vulnerable.
I looked at his polished Rolex, then up at his handsome, immaculate face.
"I simply didn't feel like writing them anymore," I said.
Graham pulled back as if I had struck him. His fork, which he had picked up from the table setting a moment before, stopped halfway to his plate.
A long, suffocating silence stretched across the dining room.
"Did something happen at the anniversary party?" he asked quietly.
My heart gave a single, hard thud against my ribs, but my face remained an unbroken mask of grace.
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"Why would you ask that?" I countered. "It was a wonderful party. Two hundred people came to celebrate us."
Graham stared at me, his dark eyes searching my face for a tear, a glare, a twitch—anything that would give him leverage. He found nothing.
