The lights dropped another notch until the chandeliers looked like dying stars. The cheese boards vanished as if they'd never existed, whisked away by the same black-gloved ghosts who'd been feeding us sin all night.
Silence fell, thick, expectant, the kind that usually precedes a firing squad or an orgasm.
Then, from the kitchen: a single off-key tenor belting "Happy Birthday" in enthusiastic Italian. The double doors swung open and two servers marched out carrying what looked less like a cake and more like a weapon of mass seduction.
Three tiers of mirror-glazed chocolate so dark it drank the candlelight and gave nothing back. Gold leaf crawled over it like it was trying to escape. A waterfall of raspberries bled down one side.
Seventeen candles ringed a spun-sugar "17" that looked suspiciously smug.
They set it in front of me like an offering to an exceptionally well-dressed pagan god.
