Vivian raised the strap a second time.

The photo on his phone showed a woman in her forties, dark-haired, standing in a garden.

Around her neck was a locket.

The same chain.

The same oval face.

The same small engraved pattern — a single olive branch, curving left.

“My grandmother had that commissioned for two women,” Vincent said.

“My mother, Lucia.

And her closest friend, a woman named Rosa.” He paused.

“Rosa Moretti, before she married.

She took the name Reyes when she left Italy.”

Clara went very still.

“My mother’s name was Elena Reyes,” she said.

“Her mother — my grandmother — was Rosa.”

“Rosa died in 2004.”

“Yes.”

Vincent looked at her for a long moment.

“Then your grandmother and my mother were raised in the same house for eleven years.

My grandmother took Rosa in when her own family couldn’t keep her.

They called each other sisters because that’s what they were.”

Clara’s hand closed around the locket.

“My mother never told me any of this,” she said.

“She only told me the locket had been a gift.

That it was the most important thing she owned.

That I should never sell it, no matter what.”

“Did she tell you anything about the Moretti family?”

“No.” Clara shook her head.

“She died when I was nineteen.

There wasn’t much time for old stories.”

Something shifted in Vincent’s face.

Not pity — something quieter than that.

“How long have you been working through the agency?”

“Eight months.”

“Is this the kind of work you want to be doing?”

Clara looked at him.

“With respect, that’s a strange question to ask someone you just met on the floor of your engagement party.”

His mouth moved.

It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was close.

“Fair,” he said.

A knock came at the corridor door.

Sharp.

Three times.

Vincent didn’t move toward it.

The knock came again, harder.

“Vincent.” Vivian’s voice, from the other side.

Controlled, but only just.

“Our guests are waiting.

Whatever this is, it can wait until tomorrow.”

He looked at the door.

Then back at Clara.

“It cannot,” he said — not loudly, but clearly enough to carry through the wood.

Silence from the other side.

Then footsteps, retreating.

Vincent turned back to Clara.

“I need to make a call.

There’s a sitting room at the end of this corridor.

Will you wait there?”

“You don’t have to do anything for me,” Clara said.

“I should go.

I’ll collect my things and—”

“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” he said.

“Not until someone has looked at your shoulder.”

She opened her mouth.

“Please,” he added.

She closed it again.

He walked her to the sitting room, opened the door, and left her there with a glass of water and the quiet.

Then he stepped back into the corridor, pulled out his phone, and made a call.

“Marco,” he said, when the line picked up.

“I need you to pull everything we have on a woman named Rosa Reyes, née Moretti.

Born approximately 1941, emigrated from Calabria sometime in the late 1960s.” A pause.

“Yes, tonight.

And Marco — keep this between us.”

He hung up.

Down the corridor, behind the ballroom doors, he could hear the sound of two hundred guests beginning to murmur.

He didn’t go back in.

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.