The cab smelled of cheap, cloying pine air-freshener, stale cigarette smoke, and the faint, bitter scent of old leather—a common, smell that was violently at odds with the chaos tearing through Eloise's mind. She didn't remember the conscious thought of hailing it. She didn't remember giving the address, or even finding the street.
She only remembered the driver's eyes, magnified and bewildered, flicking up to the rear-view mirror, widening dramatically at the sight of her reflection: the pristine white apron still knotted like a makeshift noose around her waist, her cheeks blotched red and pale in uneven patches, her pupils dilated and feral with an emotion that was part grief, part volcanic rage.
"Le Papillon," she had finally managed to rasp out, the name tasting like ash. "Now."
The cab leaped into the traffic. The city blurred past in streaky, venomous colors of gold, siren red, and wet, oily asphalt. Every sudden flash of a streetlamp felt like a harsh, unbearable spotlight. Every insistent car horn was a physical, jarring scream echoing the noise in her head.
She clutched, the plastic bag in her lap—the repurposed bin liner, still clumsily knotted, still warm from the frantic, sustained heat of her trembling fists. Inside, the two used condoms shifted, like sleeping, sluggish snakes. They were her proof, her weapon, her grotesque, physical evidence.
She paid the driver with a hundred-dollar bill she found crumpled deep in the pocket of her apron—William's money, probably long-forgotten in his drawer—and didn't wait for the change, leaving the driver to stare after her in confusion.
Le Papillon, the exclusive French restaurant, glowed ahead, an arrogant monument of false elegance. It was all crystal chandeliers, starched white linen, and the low, self-satisfied murmur of generational wealth.
The maître d', a man whose face was a perfect mask of polished disdain, opened his mouth—likely to ask for the required reservation that she obviously lacked—but something in her expression, the raw, undeniable wreckage of her face, made him step instantly aside without uttering a single word.
Inside, the air was suffocating, thick with the expensive scents of truffle oil, aged wine, and unearned money. The sound of violin strings, weeping anachronistically, layered over the delicate, continuous clink of oyster forks.
And there, by the velvet-draped window, bathed in a soft golden pool of light, was William.
He was leaning far across the table, his posture intimate, the very picture of satisfied, attentive male ownership. He was feeding a woman an oyster directly from his fingers.
The woman laughed—a low, throaty, sound of genuine amusement—and the, tasteless diamond necklace at her throat caught the chandelier light like a taunt made visible.
Just as Jayla said it was the exact same little diamond necklace he got her last Christmas as her Christmas gift.
William's hand cupped her jaw exactly the way he had always cupped Eloise's when he kissed her goodnight, or when he wanted her to stop crying. The same slow, possessive thumb stroked the exact same spot beneath the ear.
Eloise's legs carried her forward with a terrible, slow inevitability before her mind had time to construct a plan, or even truly process the scene.
The opulent room narrowed to a terrifying tunnel, focused only on that disgusting, intimate ritual: his mouth, her mouth, the oyster sliding down that stranger's throat like a physical, indisputable promise of a future that had just been stolen from her.
Jayla saw her first. She was sitting at a nearby table. She shot up instantly, a soundless scream of panic in her wide, dark eyes. "El—"
Eric's hand clamped down hard on Jayla's wrist, yanking her back down with surprising strength. "Let her," he murmured, his voice low, firm. "She needs to do this. Don't interfere."
Eloise was five feet away from the table when William finally sensed the absolute shift in the atmosphere. The warmth of the room died. His head turned slowly, the lazy, satisfied smile he wore for the woman freezing on his lips, then shattering into a jagged, incomprehensible mask.
"Eloise—"
He stood so fast, propelled by panic and shock, that the heavy chair scraped backward against the marble floor with a violent screech. The woman blinked up at him, confused, her lips still glistening faintly with brine and saliva.
"Don't," Eloise said. Her voice didn't tremble or waver. It was quiet, steady, and hard as steel. "Don't you dare say my name like it still belongs to you. Is this the office meeting you have tonight?"
He reached for her instinctively—a reflex of habit, ownership, control. His fingers brushed the bare skin of her forearm above the apron.
She moved without thinking. The half-full glass of Bordeaux on their table, his favorite vintage, was suddenly in her hand. One swift motion, and then it was airborne, splashing across his face then dripping down the pristine white shirt of his tailored suit in a violent, immediate bloom of blood-red.
Gasps rippled outward from the surrounding tables like a stone dropped into perfectly still water.
William's mouth opened, stunned by the sheer chaos. "What the hell—"
Her open palm cracked across his cheek. The sound was a horrifying, sharp gunshot in the silent, expensive room. A red handprint bloomed instantly on the pale skin of his jaw.
He touched his face, his eyes wide and vacant. "Baby, listen to me—"
The second slap came faster, harder, and from her left hand this time. His lower lip split. A single, dark bead of his own blood welled instantly.
"Don't call me baby." Her voice was like ice cracking over a terrible, furious fire. "You lost that right the first time you stuck your dick in someone else."
The entire restaurant had gone tomb-silent. Every single eye was pinned, hypnotized, to the scene by the window.
William's eyes darted, panicked, to the crowd of well-dressed strangers, then snapped back to her. He was worried about his reputation, not her pain. "Let's talk outside, Eloise. Please. This is embarrassing—"
"No." She stepped closer, invading his personal space, close enough that the woman at the table shrank back, finally registering the scale of the disaster. "We're talking right here. In the middle of your favorite room. In front of your little oyster date."
She reached into the plastic bag, her fingers finding the slimy, knotted plastic, and pulled out the two used condoms by their tails. They dangled between her fingers like dead, pale things.
Jayla's sharp inhale cut the dense air like a knife. Eric swore under his breath, a quiet, furious sound. "Jesus Christ. He just didn't."
Eloise flung them. They hit William square in the center of his chest with a soft, sickening wet thwack, slid down his ruined, wine-stained shirt, and landed on the pristine tablecloth like two pale, knotted slugs.
"Explain those," she said, her voice dangerously, deadly soft. "Go ahead, William. Tell me again how it was Ryan. Tell me I'm being hysterical."
William's face drained completely of color, leaving his features ash-white against the jarring red stain. The blonde woman at the table made a small, strangled sound and scrambled frantically for her expensive purse, needing a swift escape.
"I—" His throat worked, swallowing desperately. "Ryan crashed here last weekend. I told you he—"
"Wrong answer." Eloise's smile was razor-sharp, a thin, frightening line. "Try again. And this time, maybe explain why I just watched you tongue-fuck her mouth in front of half the city. With the same mouth that swore you'd wait. Two years, William. Two years I gave you every piece of me that wasn't locked behind fear. I never asked you to shrink yourself. Why wasn't I enough for the waiting? Why wasn't I enough?"
The blonde woman was shifting, clearly uncomfortable and terrified now, but William didn't even notice her. His jaw flexed with a terrible tension. Something ugly and cold crawled across his face, something she had never, not once, seen in two years of their intimacy. The carefully constructed mask of the patient hero slipped, and beneath it was naked, venomous contempt.
His voice rose, suddenly loud and entirely without love. "You want the goddamn truth?" he hissed, stepping directly into her space, his breath smelling of wine and expensive seafood. "Fine. A man has needs, Eloise. Needs you absolutely refused to meet for two goddamn years."
Her spine straightened instantly, a rod of rigid disbelief, but she still did not step back.
"I waited," he spat, the word laced with resentment. "Three months I waited like a saint. Then six. Then a year. And what did I get? Hmm? You with your 'I'm nervous' and your 'I have trauma' and your endless, fucking pathetic excuses. Trauma that I had nothing to do with! And why should I suffer? So yeah, I found someone who doesn't treat sex like a goddamn therapy session. Maybe if you weren't so broken—"
His cruel words were instantly cut off by the crack of Jayla's palm across his cheek. It was so loud, so sudden, that the crystal chandelier above their heads seemed to actually tremble.
"You piece of shit," Jayla snarled, her eyes blazing with protective fury. "I always knew you were trash. That promise to let her quit waitressing? That 'I'll take care of you forever'? Lies. All of it." Her second slap followed before William could fully register what just happened. "You just wanted her dependent. And to think she wanted to surprise you. You don't deserve the dirt under her shoes."
William's hand reared back in raw, instinctual rage, that he didn't hear the surprise part. Eric was there in a heartbeat, his presence silent but immense, catching William's raised wrist in a vise grip of pure, physical strength.
"Touch her and I'll break every finger," Eric said, his voice entirely conversational. "Slowly."
William yanked his wrist free, breathing hard, his face a terrifying mess of blood, wine, and humiliation. "You think you're saints—" He stopped, his eyes finding Eloise again, and for the first time, there was a flash of raw, desperate fear in them.
Eloise stared at the man she had loved with every quiet, soft, stupid inch of her heart. The man who'd once held her while she cried over burnt toast. The man who'd kissed her eyelids and whispered she was his forever. She searched his face for a single flicker of the patient, tender person she thought she knew.
There was nothing. Just a cold, vindictive stranger in a wine-stained shirt.
Her stomach lurched violently. Bile rose, hot and sour in the back of her throat. The room swayed precariously. She locked her knees, swallowing the sickness down hard. She would not give him her tears. Not here. Not now. Not in front of him.
"You will regret this," she said, and her voice did not waver once. It was a clear, perfect curse. "Every time you close your eyes, you'll see my face. Every time you touch someone else, you'll feel my hand on your cheek. You'll wake up choking on what you threw away for a cheap night."
She turned on her heel. The crowd of onlookers parted for her like the Red Sea.
Jayla fell instantly into step beside her, her whole body trembling with suppressed rage. Eric flanked her other side, a silent, implacable wall of protection.
They were almost to the main door when a voice—low, smooth as aged whiskey, carrying a distinctly cultured, subtle accent—cut through the sudden, deep hush behind them.
"Brava."
Eloise didn't stop. She didn't look back. The applause didn't matter.
Outside, the cold, clean night air slapped her face. She dragged it into her lungs, deep and hard, until the violent nausea finally receded.
Jayla grabbed her shoulders, her hands tight and shaking. "El. Breathe. Please, just breathe."
"I'm breathing," Eloise said. And for the first time in ten minutes, she was. Deep, steady, furious breaths that promised action, not collapse.
Eric, ever the pragmatist, handed her a clean handkerchief (who even carried those anymore?). She took it and scrubbed her hands and forearms like she could physically scrub William's touch from her skin.
"What now?" Jayla asked, her voice small, almost broken.
Eloise looked back at the large, glowing windows of Le Papillon. Somewhere inside, William was probably already spinning desperate lies to salvage his reputation. Somewhere inside, a woman was learning exactly what kind of man she had just spent an evening with.
"Now?" Eloise whispered.
The word barely made it past her lips. It quivered, thin as the edge of a cracked glass. She tried to inhale, but her chest refused to obey. Her throat tightened, and for a single, unguarded heartbeat, she felt the total, crushing weight of the betrayal land fully on her shoulders—the kind of weight that could fold a person in half and leave them permanently damaged.
Jayla reached toward her, panic instantly rising.
"El… don't—"
But Eloise took one shaky step back, blinking rapidly as if forcefully pushing the tears deeper inside her skull, forcing a rigid strength to sit on top of the splintering pieces inside.
Eric stepped off the curb and raised a hand, calling the nearest cab with a sharp, piercing whistle that cut through the city night. Jayla stood frozen beside Eloise, her eyes shining with unshed tears, her breath unsteady like she was holding herself back from collapsing first.
Headlights washed over them, painting Eloise in a blinding white light that made her look ghost-like, ephemeral.
"I want to be alone," she said, her voice soft and irrevocably frayed.
Jayla grabbed her hand instantly, fear overriding her friend's request. "No. El, don't. Come with me. To my place. Please. Don't do this by yourself."
But Eric touched Jayla's shoulder gently, a silent command. "Let her breathe, Jay. She needs a moment… away from all this noise."
Jayla hesitated, torn completely between her fear for Eloise and her understanding of the necessity for space. When the cab rolled up to the curb, she swallowed hard, fighting back her own tears. "Promise me you'll text me when you get home. Promise me you'll call. I'll be there in the morning. Promise."
Eloise nodded, though it felt like her body was moving without any instruction from her brain.
She climbed into the cab, closing the door gently, almost reverently, as if any louder movement might shatter her completely.
As the cab pulled forward, the city smeared into streaks of neon and an indistinguishable blur. In the window, she saw herself—her reflection surfaced in the dark glass.
Her hair was tangled and wild.
The white apron was stained with a bright, indelible red.
Her eyes were rimmed in a bright, burning ache, an expression of hurt and loss she couldn't hide anymore.
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass.
Then, in the quiet, forward hum of the moving night, the first tear slipped, cutting a clean path through the grime on her cheek.
Then another.
And another.
Until she wasn't holding anything in at all.
What she didn't know—what she couldn't possibly sense through the violent storm twisting inside her—was that the piercing, icy blue-gray eyes of a stranger had been tracking her every single step since the moment she walked into the restaurant. Like a predatory observer watching a queen walk out of a battlefield she had just set entirely on fire.
And in the deep shadows of the street, beneath the awning of the restaurant, a tall, impeccably dressed figure in a dark coat, the owner of the aged whiskey voice, watched the cab disappear into the traffic.
One hand slipped into his pocket, his long, elegant fingers closing around the Cohiba Behike 54 cigar he hadn't planned to use tonight.
Piercing icy blue-gray eyes narrowed as he considered the unfolding drama.
Then he smiled, slow and dangerous.