The bows simply came down and went quiet, and no one told them to.

Grayson turned to face his mother fully.

“What did you just say?”

Delphine heard the crowd, heard herself, and tried to claw the moment back — this was not the place, there were reporters, the Sinclair family was waiting inside, all of it could be explained privately, later, calmly.

But every sentence she used to try to close the box only pried it further open, because a woman does not scramble that hard to postpone a conversation about nothing.

Serena set her engagement ring flat on a glass cocktail table, with a small final click that carried farther than it should have.