Vivian raised the strap a second time.

Vivian found him in the corridor twenty minutes later.

She had composed herself completely.

The fury was gone.

The softness was back — the version of her that had taken years to perfect, the version that had convinced boardrooms and charmed families and won Vincent Moretti slowly, over three careful years.

"She's playing you," Vivian said.

"You know that."

"Do I."

"A locket, Vincent.

Anyone can find an old locket.

Anyone can claim a dead woman as their grandmother.

You have two hundred people in that room who flew in from four countries for this evening, and you're standing in a hallway over a server you met forty minutes ago."

"She was on the floor," he said.

"You put her there."

"She ruined my dress."

"It was an accident."

"That is not the point." Vivian stepped closer.

Her voice dropped.

"The point is that I cannot have staff treating me that way in front of our guests.

I handled it.

You would have done the same if someone had embarrassed you publicly."

"I would not have done the same."

"You don't know that."

"Vivian." He turned to face her fully.

"I have watched you in rooms for three years.

I have seen how you speak to waiters, to drivers, to people you consider beneath you.

I told myself it didn't matter.

That it was how you were raised.

That it would change."

Her chin lifted slightly.

"And?"

"It didn't change.

It got worse."

A pause.

Something flickered behind her eyes — not guilt, but recalculation.

"So this is about more than the girl."

"Yes."

"Vincent." She reached for his arm.

"Whatever you're thinking right now, stop.

We have guests.

We have a party.

We have a future that took three years to build.

You are not going to throw that away over a stranger with a piece of jewelry."

He looked at her hand on his arm.

She released it.

"I need to get back to our guests," she said.

"And so do you.

We can talk about this tomorrow, when you've had time to think clearly."

"I am thinking clearly."

"You're not.

You're emotional.

That girl got to you and you don't even know why yet." She smoothed the front of her gown — the one that still carried the faint shadow of the wine stain.

"Come back inside.

Smile.

Let the evening finish.

That's all I'm asking."

He said nothing.

She waited.

"Vivian," he said finally.

"Who handled the staffing for tonight?"

She blinked.

"The agency.

Same as always."

"Which agency?"

"Premiere Event Staff.

Why?"

"Did you personally approve the list of servers?"

A beat.

Just one.

But he caught it.

"I approved the numbers," she said.

"Not the individual names.

That's not how it works."

"But you did review the final list."

"Vincent, I don't see what this has to do with—"

"Did you review the list?"

Her jaw tightened.

"Yes.

I reviewed it."

"And Clara Reyes was on it."

Silence.

"You knew her name before tonight," he said.

It wasn't a question.

"I don't remember every name on a staffing sheet."

"You remember everything, Vivian.

That is one of the things I have always admired about you."

She held his gaze for three full seconds.

Then she looked away — toward the ballroom doors, toward the sound of guests and music and the life she had constructed so carefully around this man and his name.

"I think you should come back inside," she said quietly.

"I think you should tell me why Clara Reyes was on that list."

She didn't answer.

The ballroom doors opened at the far end of the corridor.

A man in a tuxedo leaned out — one of Vincent's cousins, confused, searching.

"Vince?

Everything alright?"

"Fine," Vincent said.

"Give us a moment."

The doors closed again.

When he turned back, Vivian was already walking away — back toward the ballroom, back toward the guests, back toward the version of the evening she could still salvage.

She paused at the doors without turning around.

"Don't do something you can't undo," she said.

Then she pushed through, and the music swallowed her.

Vincent stood alone in the corridor.

His phone buzzed.

A message from Marco: *Found something.