“No.”
“Then what?”
“My date,” I said before Lorenzo could answer.
Ethan smiled bitterly.
“Right.
The mafia boss.”
My mother inhaled sharply.
Chloe stared at me.
I wished I could pull the words back into my mouth.
That had been anger talking earlier.
A ridiculous boast meant to shock Ethan.
Lorenzo, however, appeared completely untroubled.
He picked up his water glass.
“You should be careful with labels, Prescott.”
Ethan’s confidence flickered again.
“Why?”
“Because people sometimes discover they understand much less about another man’s business than they imagined.”
No threat.
No confession.
Just a sentence.
But Ethan went quiet.
I finally understood that his fear did not come from some dramatic criminal secret Lorenzo had revealed to him.
It came from reputation, power, and uncertainty.
Ethan knew Lorenzo was connected, wealthy, influential, and impossible to intimidate.
He didn’t know where the edges were.
Neither did I.
And that uncertainty was enough.
Dinner limped forward after that.
Nobody toasted.
My mother attempted three separate conversations about wedding venues, each dying within seconds.
My father finally spoke to me when dessert arrived.
“I should have said something sooner,” he said quietly.
I looked at him.
He stared at his untouched tiramisu.
“When everything happened,” he continued, “I thought staying out of it would keep the family together.”
“It didn’t.”
“I know.”
It wasn’t a grand apology.
It wasn’t enough to repair years of silence.
But it was the first time he had admitted that choosing no side had still been a choice.
Across the table, Chloe removed her hand from Ethan’s.
He noticed.
“So this is what you wanted?” he asked me.
“You wanted to ruin our engagement dinner?”
I shook my head.
“No.
I wanted to survive it without pretending you never hurt me.”
“That’s the same thing to you?”
“No.
It only feels the same because everyone has spent months protecting you from consequences.”
He stood abruptly.
Chloe flinched.
Lorenzo remained seated.
That contrast seemed to make Ethan even angrier.
“You think bringing him here makes you powerful?”
I looked at Lorenzo.
