My appetite vanished in an instant, and I refused to keep swallowing my own hurt.
“Excuse me, could you take this dish away? I'll still pay for it.”
But Lorenzo slid the plate over in front of himself.
“So I didn't sit with you while you were laid up. When did you get so dramatic? If you'd watched where you were going, you wouldn't have ended up there in the first place.”
I'd seen what he looked like when he cared about me. So the fact that he didn't love me was just as obvious now.
Once, when I'd run a high fever, this was the man who'd carried me on his back in the dead of night, running through empty streets until he was nearly in tears. Yet when he was the one who'd put me in that hospital bed, he was nowhere to be found.
The man who knew I hated bitter melon, who'd never once set anything bitter in front of me, had suddenly gone back to the way he was five years ago when we first met, ordering it like a stranger across the table.
I tugged my lips into a faint smile and said evenly,
“I hate eating bitter melon. The smell makes me sick.”
“Then just don't eat it. Problem solved, isn't it?”
His impatience was plain. My smile didn't waver.
“Let's brea—……”
Before I could finish, a woman appeared beside the table.
“Lorenzo, after all these years, you still remember I love bitter melon!”
I lifted my eyes calmly and looked at her, her makeup flawless, staring down at me with open contempt.
She nudged Lorenzo over without a word, squeezing in to sit right beside him, directly across from me.
“Let me introduce myself. I'm Lorenzo's woman, Bianca Russo.”
I didn't respond.
So she made a point of pressing against Lorenzo's arm.
“Lorenzo, why don't you introduce her? She's……”
Lorenzo's expression wasn't pleasant. Around us the low murmur of the club's regulars carried on, ice settling in glasses, men talking business that wasn't ours to hear. But at our table the air had gone tight.
Clearly Bianca's sudden arrival had caught him off guard.
The way his eyes darted away, the way his thumb found the heavy signet ring on his right hand and began to turn it, struck me as almost funny.
“She's an associate in my crew. The place was full, so we just shared a table.”
Lorenzo's head snapped toward me, shock flashing through his eyes for a split second before he let out a long breath of relief.
“Ah, right. This is one of mine, Adriana Bellandi.”
At that, Bianca smiled, sweet and lovely. The corner of her mouth lifted a fraction too fast before she remembered to look gracious.
“Miss Bellandi must be exceptionally useful to him. This is the first time I've ever seen Lorenzo sit at a table with a woman other than me.”
With that, she set her phone down beside her, casually nudging it forward.
The provocation in it was unmistakable.
I caught a glimpse of the photo on her screen. Just as I'd thought, it was the two of them, a matched pair.
Even the clothes they wore today fell in the same palette, like something chosen together, the kind of thing tribute money buys.
Now, sitting close under the soft lamps of the club, they made a strikingly well-matched pair, the handsome man and the beautiful woman.
I set down my fork and rose to leave.
Bianca grabbed my hand, her long nails digging viciously into my flesh where Lorenzo couldn't see.
“Miss Bellandi, you're leaving the second I arrive? Did I say something wrong? I'll apologize. Isn't that enough?”
Faced with a snake like her, I had no patience for these games. I yanked my hand free.
I was just checking the welts she'd dug into my wrist when, out of nowhere, her hand came down in a slap across a little boy playing near the tables.
The boy yelped in pain and burst into loud sobs.
Bianca's eyes instantly reddened, and she rushed to apologize to him.
Lorenzo hurried to press a fold of cash into the parents' hands along with his own apology, the way these things are smoothed over.
Then, without warning, the little boy pointed straight at me and said,
“It was her! She swung this lady's hand at me and hit me! I want her to apologize!”
Bianca immediately put on the picture of wounded innocence.
“Miss Bellandi, I don't know how I offended you, but if you have a problem with me, take it out on me. Don't drag an innocent child into it.”
In an instant, the diners around us were pointing and whispering, the way whispers move through the Family, faster than truth.
Lorenzo shot me a furious glare and said coldly,
“What are you standing there for? Hurry up and apologize to him! Have you no shame?”
