You’ll walk out of here with half of whatever I decide is left to give you.” Lorna did not rise to it.

She pulled out the empty chair meant for Sabrina, and she sat down in it, and she folded her hands on the linen.

“Simone invited me to dinner,” she said, “because there are several documents you’ll want to receive in person.” And for the first time that evening, the smile on my husband’s face lost its footing.

I had chosen the dinner deliberately — the table for three, the third place set.

Roman thought he was staging a humiliation: his wife made to cook and serve for his mistress, in his wife’s own house, a demonstration of how completely he had won.