The waitress didn’t answer immediately. “Just Mae is fine.”

The waitress didn’t answer immediately.

“Just Mae is fine.”

Charlotte smiled. “How mysterious.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened almost invisibly. He didn’t rescue people from Charlotte’s moods. That was one of the rules everyone in his world learned quickly: if you stepped into the storm, you owned the lightning.

Charlotte rested an elbow on the table and looked Mae up and down. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And yet you’re still telling me no?”

“I’m telling you what the kitchen is able to do.”

The answer was polite. That somehow made it worse.

For Charlotte, humiliation had never passed cleanly through the body. It lodged. It accumulated. Little moments from childhood lived inside her with terrible freshness: her mother correcting her posture in front of guests, a headmistress telling her she lacked discipline, boys in boarding school loving her face but laughing at her temper. She had spent most of her adult life making

sure no one ever got the upper hand long enough to wound her first.

And tonight Adrian had already wounded her.

Now this waitress was standing there with calm eyes and a straight spine and refusing to disappear.

Charlotte heard herself say, “Apologize.”

Mae blinked once. “For what, ma’am?”

“For being rude.”

“I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

“You’re being rude now.”

Mae folded her hands lightly in front of her. “I apologize if I came across that way.”

Charlotte felt a thrill of power. “No. Not like that.” She leaned back and smiled wider. “On your knees.”

The room changed.

It didn’t become louder. It became quieter in the dangerous way. Knives paused. Glasses hovered in midair. One of the older men near the bar slowly set down his bourbon and looked toward Adrian’s booth.

Mae did not move.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You heard me.” Charlotte’s voice sharpened.

“On your knees. Right here. In front of me. If you want to work in this city, you should learn how to apologize properly.”

The blood seemed to drain from the entire restaurant.

Adrian still had not moved, but something had entered his face. Not anger yet. Not action. Recognition, maybe, that some line had arrived.

Mae’s voice, when it came, was quiet. “No, ma’am.”

Charlotte stared at her. “What?”