Chapter 7 Dinner

Amelia POV

The Grey Hart looked like it had been carved out of a single block of dark wood and candlelight. Every table sat far enough apart to guarantee privacy, every server moved like they'd been trained not to make a sound. I understood the moment we walked in why Raymond's father chose this place for things that needed fixing. It was built for conversations no one else was meant to hear.

Raymond held my chair before I could reach it myself, the gesture smooth and practiced, and I lowered myself into it with my spine straight and my hands folded the way years of tutors had drilled into me. Alyssa would have sprawled. Alyssa would have already ordered a second glass of wine and made a joke about the maître d's tie.

I sat like Amelia and hoped no one noticed.

"You look lovely," Raymond said once we were seated, and something in his voice made it sound less like a compliment and more like an observation he intended to keep turning over.

"Thank you."

A waiter appeared, poured wine I didn't touch, and disappeared again just as silently. Raymond watched me over the rim of his glass, patient in a way that made my skin prickle.

"I read an interesting piece last year," he said, conversational, almost bored. "About a certain alpha's daughter who was asked to leave a gala in the Sky Green territory. Something about a shattered chandelier and an argument with a groomsman."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I had no memory of this. Of course I didn't. It had happened to Alyssa, some wild night I'd only heard about secondhand through furious phone calls between our father and hers.

"That was..." I reached for something, anything. "A misunderstanding. The chandelier was already unstable before I ever got near it."

"Was it." Raymond's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "The article claimed you climbed onto a table to reach it."

Heat crawled up my neck. I forced a small, careless laugh, the kind I imagined Alyssa might give if cornered. "Reporters exaggerate everything. You of all people should know that."

"I do." He leaned back, unconvinced but willing, for now, to let it go. "Though I'll admit, the version I read painted quite a vivid picture. Champagne. A dare. Something about proving you weren't afraid of heights."

I picked up my wine glass just to have something to do with my hands. "I was young."

"You're twenty-four."

"Younger, then." The words came out clipped, too fast, and I saw the flicker in his eyes that meant he'd noticed the crack in my composure.

Silence settled over the table, thick enough to taste. I made myself breathe, made myself remember every story Alyssa had ever told me in passing, every scrap of gossip I'd overheard between our father's assistants. I had spent my whole life listening while she lived loudly enough for both of us. Surely some of it had stuck.

"There was also," Raymond continued, almost gentle now, which somehow made it worse, "a rumor about a road trip to the coast. Three days, no word to your father, a motorcycle that wasn't yours."

That one I actually remembered, because Alyssa had come home glowing and unrepentant, and our father hadn't spoken to her for a week.

"That one's true," I said before I could stop myself, and something in my voice must have shifted, because Raymond's eyebrows lifted with genuine interest for the first time all evening.

"Is it."

I set my glass down and made myself meet his eyes instead of the tablecloth. If I was going to survive this dinner, I needed to stop apologizing for a life I hadn't lived and start owning it like it was mine.

"I needed to breathe," I said, letting the words come slower now, steadier. "My father plans every hour of every day for me. Sometimes the only way to remember I'm a person and not a piece on his board is to do something reckless enough that he can't control the outcome."

Something shifted in Raymond's expression, the polite curiosity sharpening into something closer to attention.

"And the chandelier?"

I allowed myself a small, sharp smile. "I never said I regretted it."

He laughed then, a real laugh, low and surprised, like it had been startled out of him. "There she is."

My pulse jumped at the words, an echo of Maria's voice from that morning, and I wondered how many people had been searching for the same version of me, the one hiding underneath careful posture and rehearsed answers.

"Careful," I said, finding a rhythm now, letting my voice carry the same edge I imagined Alyssa always had. "You say that like you expected someone duller."

"I expected someone exactly like the papers described." He studied me over his glass, something calculating creeping back into his gaze even as his mouth still held the shadow of that laugh. "Instead I keep meeting someone new every time I turn around."

"Maybe I'm simply more than one story."

"Maybe." He said it slowly, testing the word. "Or maybe you're very good at telling whichever one keeps me from asking harder questions."

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. I kept my expression smooth through sheer force of will, reached for my wine, and took a slow sip to buy myself half a second to think.

"You think I'm hiding something."

"I think," Raymond said, leaning forward slightly, candlelight carving sharp lines across his face, "that a woman who climbed a table on a dare doesn't blush at a dinner question. And a woman who ran off on a motorcycle for three days doesn't sit with her spine that straight unless someone taught her to."

My heart slammed once, hard, against my ribs.

"Who taught you to sit like that, Alyssa?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and found, for the first time all evening, that I had absolutely no idea what to say.