[Jake's POV]
The rest of dinner tasted like a warning.
Not because the food changed. The lamb was still perfect, the wine still older than several small companies, and the women around the table still smiled with the same polished ease. But after Margot returned from the corridor, the room no longer pretended to be harmless. The Winter Table had shown its teeth, and everyone intelligent enough to survive there had noticed.
Aurelia did not ask me what happened.
That was the first proof she already understood.
She simply lifted her glass and guided the conversation back toward foundations, museum boards, and a judge's retirement dinner in Connecticut where someone's wife had apparently poured champagne into someone else's handbag. The table laughed. Vivian Crossley added a detail about the handbag being fake crocodile. Marianne smiled at the right moments, but her eyes stayed clear. Margot sat across from me, calm again, her gloves resting neatly beside the stem of her glass.
