The black disk disappeared beneath the lining of Nora’s clutch.
On the frozen security image, Derek’s face looked almost peaceful.
No bourbon rage.
No clenched jaw.
No visible anger.
He glanced toward the windows where Nora stood with her phone pressed to her ear, then calmly closed her bag and returned it to the bar.
Dominic turned from the monitor.
“How many times has he found you after you moved?”
Nora did not answer immediately.
She was remembering the first apartment she had taken after leaving Derek three months earlier.
She had told no one except her sister, changed her number, and paid the deposit in cash.
Derek appeared outside the building four days later holding roses.
He claimed coincidence.
The second time, Nora stayed with a coworker in a neighborhood Derek had never visited.
He found her before sunrise and waited across the street in his car.
He said a mutual friend had told him.
There had been no mutual friend.
“Twice,” she whispered.
Dominic’s gaze returned to the screen.
“And tonight?”
“I didn’t tell him I was coming here.”
“Yet he arrived.”
Nora stared at the frozen image until Derek’s fingers blurred behind fresh tears.
“I thought he was following my phone.”
“He may have been,” Dominic said.
“But men like him prefer more than one leash.”
He nodded toward one of the guards.
“Her bag is still at the bar.
Retrieve it without touching the interior.
Have security preserve the original footage from every camera covering the entrance, bar, elevators, and front desk.”
The guard left immediately.
Nora watched the dark oak door close behind him.
“You believe me?” she asked.
Dominic looked almost offended by the question.
“I believe cameras.
They are less sentimental than people.”
The answer should have stung.
Instead, it steadied her.
Dominic was not asking whether Derek was usually kind.
He was not asking what Nora had said to provoke him or why she had stayed so long.
He was looking at evidence.
On the monitor, the footage resumed.
Derek sat beside Nora, smiling for anyone watching.
His hand disappeared below the bar and closed around her wrist.
Nora’s shoulders jerked.
She tried to pull away.
The camera had no clear audio from that angle, but it recorded the movement of his mouth as he leaned toward her.
You leave with me, or you leave in an ambulance.
Nora heard the sentence again inside her head.
Then the image showed her reaching for her clutch.
Derek blocked it with his forearm.
She tried to stand.
His grip tightened.
Her elbow struck the cocktail glass, sending it onto the marble floor.
Heads turned.
Nobody moved.
