I tilt my head, give her the half-smile that’s made others forget their good sense and safe choices. ‘Something far worse.’
And she still doesn’t give up.
God, I like her.
The restaurant hums with the clink of cutlery, murmurs beneath the noise of violin strings. It’s civilised, safe. I watch her watching me, too focused, too composed, thinking she’s got control, so I break it.
I reach into my trouser pocket and pull out the lace. Soft, warm lace. I flick my wrist and let it fall across her wine glass.
Her knickers.
I see the shift in her face, the split-second blankness, the scramble behind her eyes while she recalibrates everything she thought this meal was. I smile. Not wide. Just enough.
‘You can have these back,’ I say.
I sit back in my chair, sip my wine and let her decide whether to pick them up like they mean nothing – or like they mean everything.
She blinks. That’s my first reward. She reaches. Sheactuallyreaches for them, and folds them into her palm like they’re fragile.
‘Classy,’ she says.
I let my smirk deepen. ‘You look better without them. Besides,’ I tilt my head, letting my voice drop into that sweet abyss between cruelty and charm. ‘I’m done with them now.’
There’s a beautiful ribbon of humiliation racing up her neck. She tastes iron. I know because her jaw tenses like she’s about to bite something that isn’t food. I drape my arm over the back of the chair, lazy and languid, like I didn’t just dismantle her in front of two dozen strangers and a sommelier. She’s still trying to figure out what game we’re playing, but I’ve already won.
Her lips part like she’s searching for the script but forgot the lines, and I lean in. ‘You don’t think I’d have left your knickers behind, do you?’ I say it softly, like it’s a perfectly reasonable conversation to be having in a restaurant gilded in gold and old money.
She doesn’t answer, so I continue. ‘You see, sweetheart. Surviving in this world means walking into a room like the smoke parts for you because it’s desperate to be inhaled by your lungs. And I – I pretend. That’s how I survive. That’s how I stay on the inside without getting my hands dirty.’
‘I’m not following,’ she says. ‘What has that to do with my knickers?’
‘Everything and nothing. Lactose powder, baby formula, crushed vitamin C. I’ve got it down to a performance; the deep breath, the roll of a hundred, the twitch of my jaw. They cheer. They trust. And I’m clean. You see, in this world, pretending isn’t lying. It’s living. You don’t blend in with wolves by whining about fleas. You learn to howl. You should know that better than anyone, Ms Dubois…’
‘I get it,’ she nods.
‘Hmm. You ever see a wolf play dead?’
‘No.’
‘They roll over, bare their vulnerable stomachs, and the pack leaves them be. It’s smart. You can learn a lot by looking harmless. In this world, they think I’m one of them. They watch me snort, hoot, holler, slap backs. But it’s all theatre. All of it.’
‘So what you’re saying is you just snorted lactose powder or something?’
‘No, darling. This time, it was crushed Vitamin C and your pussy juices that had dried in the gusset of your knickers.’
She shoots to her feet, the chair scraping sharp against the tiled floor, breath caught somewhere between panic and outrage. I don’t move. I don’t need to. I set my fork down slowly, deliberately like I have all the time in the world. ‘Sit down.’
Her eyes flicker, uncertain. One step back, her shoe catching on the lip of the rug behind her.
‘Are you forgetting where you are?’ I go on, my gaze steady. ‘Or who you’re with?’
The silence that follows isn’t empty, it presses in, thick and as hot as summer air before a storm.
She sits. The restaurant, with its candlelight and clinks of cutlery carries on around us like nothing had shifted. But it had.Oh, it had.
‘Stella, when will you learn that I will ruin you?’ I say, ‘Not just your plans. Not just your name, I mean,you– emotionally…spiritually… and the parts of you no one else sees.’
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t add any theatrics, just weight - the kind that settles behind my ribs and doesn’t leave.
