The champagne flute felt cold and fragile in David's hand, a stark contrast to the simmering heat beneath his composed exterior. He had been discussing merger prospects with the CEO of a rival company, his words sharp and calculated, but his attention had long since fractured.
Elara had been gone too long.
A quick glance at his Patek Philippe confirmed it: seventeen minutes. A bathroom break didn't take seventeen minutes. Not unless something was wrong. Or someone was involved.
The polite smile he'd maintained for his business associates began to feel like a crack in porcelain. "If you'll excuse me for a moment," he said, his voice a carefully modulated calm that betrayed nothing of the sudden, cold knot tightening in his stomach. "I should check on my wife."
He moved through the crowd with a purpose that made people instinctively step aside. His eyes, usually so focused on gauging business opponents, now scanned the glittering throng for a glimpse of her emerald-green dress. She wasn't by the buffet, nor near the string quartet. She wasn't chatting with the other society wives.
Each empty spot where she wasn't fueled a quiet, building frenzy. The ghost of Kael, a specter he thought he'd buried, seemed to whisper from the shadows of the ballroom. She's remembering. She's comparing.
"Have you seen Davina?" he asked a group of women, his tone light, almost casual.
"No, David, not recently," one of them chirped. "Perhaps she stepped out for some air?"
Air. The word was a trigger. He remembered the cool night breeze on the terrace the night he'd proposed. The way Elara had looked then—hopeful, full of light. A look he rarely saw in her eyes these days.
He made his way toward the terrace doors, his pace quickening. Pushing one open, he stepped into the tranquil night. The terrace was empty, save for a couple sharing a clandestine laugh in a far corner. It wasn't them.
But something felt… charged. The air itself felt different, thick with the residue of a powerful emotion. His eyes, sharp and missing nothing, scanned the tiled floor. And then he saw it.
A small, glinting object near a stone planter. He walked over and bent down, his blood running cold as he picked it up.
It was a diamond earring. One of the pair he had bought for Elara on their last anniversary in Paris.
It lay in his palm, a tiny, brilliant accusation. She wouldn't have just lost it. She loved these earrings. A cold, logical part of his brain began piecing it together. The long absence. The empty terrace. The lost earring, pulled loose in a struggle or… an embrace.
The porcelain smile finally shattered. His fist closed around the earring, the sharp edges of the diamond digging into his flesh. The cool, sophisticated businessman was gone, replaced by a man whose greatest fear was materializing right before his eyes.
He turned on his heel and strode back into the ballroom, his gaze no longer searching but hunting. He didn't bother with polite inquiries anymore. He moved with a single-minded intensity, his eyes raking over every corner, every shadowy alcove.
And then he saw her.
She was emerging from a side corridor, one that led to the private meeting rooms and service areas. Her gait was unsteady. Her hand, he noticed with a jolt, was pressed against her lips. And her eyes—wide, dazed, glistening with unshed tears—were the eyes of a woman who had just been thoroughly, devastatingly kissed.
She hadn't seen him yet. For a moment, he just watched her, the truth of it crashing down on him with the force of a physical blow. The promises, the counseling they didn't need, her reluctance—it all crystallized in this one, damning image.
He stepped into her path, his presence suddenly blocking her escape back into the gilded world of the gala.
"Elara."
Her name was a low, dangerous sound, devoid of its usual warmth. She flinched, her hand dropping from her mouth as if burned. Her eyes, wide with a fresh wave of panic, met his.
She looked utterly, completely undone.
"David," she breathed, her voice a broken whisper. "I… I was just…"
He didn't let her finish. He opened his fist, revealing the diamond earring resting on his palm.
"You lost this," he said, his voice dangerously quiet, the words dripping with a cold fury that made her shrink back. "Care to tell me how it ended up on the terrace?"
The carefully constructed walls of their marriage, the unspoken truce, the gilded facade—it all crumbled in the space between them, in the deafening silence of her guilty stare. The cage door had just been rattled, and the beast inside was finally awake.