The woman in the green dress looked at me with open disgust. “Dominic, darling, who is this unkempt woman? Is this the unstable stalker ex you told my father about?”

Dominic’s mother, who’d been laughing a second earlier, bolted upright from her seat. “Vivienne, remove yourself this instant! You’re ruining the most important night of my son’s career.

Have you no decency?”

I stopped exactly ten feet from his table. I looked down at Sophia, then gently pulled the paper necklace from her hand. I walked forward and dropped the little craft right into the center of Dominic’s pristine caviar plate.

“Sophia wanted to give you her art project to celebrate your promotion, Dominic,” I said, my voice echoing off the glass walls with a freezing, razor-sharp clarity.

“But it seems you’ve already filled your table.”