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She glances toward the brass staircase.

“There was that little room at the top.” Her thumb strokes once over the dark wool at Kane’s arm. “Do you still keep the good vodka up there?”

God, she’s good.

She’s got an emotional scalpel and she’s carving me into bloody ribbons. Every word is another shiv under the ribs.

It hurts so much more than it should.

Because it emphasizes all the things she is that I’m not.

I am not tall enough to look elegant in a column dress.

I am not poised enough to touch a mob boss’s chest so confidently and sexily.

I am not the one who knows where he keeps his good vodka.

Anna’s borrowed shawl suddenly feels like a blanket someone put around a sad, lost child.

Of course Alisa has history with him.

Look at her.

Look at him.

They make visual sense. A match made in heaven.

Then look at me.

The curvy baker. The odd one out.

Then Kane moves.

He slides his arm out from under her hand, leaving her clutching at nothing. Then he reaches up and takes her other hand off his chest by the wrist and returns it to her.

“Your vodka is downstairs,” he says, “with everyone else’s.”

He looks down at me. Suddenly, she’s the odd one out. His broad body blocks most of her from me.

“Lilah, would you like to find somewhere to sit?”

I open my mouth. “Um. Yeah. Yes. My feet are— Yes.”

Alisa laughs from just behind Kane’s shoulder. “Oh, this is sweet,” she says in a voice that’s suddenly gone venomous. “Watching you play house.”

Kane speaks to her without looking in her direction. “You should go, Alisa. As always, it’s been a pleasure.”

Alisa’s smile remains frozen for a beat after the dismissal. “Kane⁠—”

“Don’t make me tell you twice.”

A long pause follows, and I start to wonder if she’s about to grab the champagne glass I set down, crack it on the table, then stab either me or Kane or both with the jagged edges.

In the end, though, she doesn’t.

Nothing happens at all.

She just walks away without rushing, spine straight, as glamorous on the outside as ever.