I didn’t answer right away.

Instead, I let my eyes drift deliberately from his trembling hands down to the narrow waist of his mistress, and finally up to Elena’s glossy, cherry-tinted lips, which were currently curling into a smirk of profound amusement.

“I came to return something that was misplaced,” I said.

My voice was a calm, even current cutting through the ambient jazz playing softly in the background.

The immediate vicinity grew suddenly, uncomfortably quiet. The clinking of crystal flutes ceased. Elena, a masterclass in theatrical innocence, tilted her head perfectly to catch the light.

“Oh?” she purred, her tone dripping with manufactured confusion. “And you might be?”