Teodoro Brasi, Xavier's closest friend and most devoted lapdog, leaned forward with a smirk that split his face like a knife wound. "Hey, Mia. What was your surname again?" He snapped his fingers in mock recollection. "Oh, my apologies. I forgot. You don't have one, do you? Hard to have a family name when you don't have a father."
The table rippled with low, ugly laughter.
I raised my head. I looked directly at him. Not with anger. Not with hurt. With the flat, disinterested gaze of someone watching a street performer fumble through a tired routine.
"Who are you again?"
The laughter died. Teodoro's smirk curdled on his face. The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Shortly after, the front door opened and Xavier walked in with Vanessa Lestari at his side. They entered the hall together, her shoulder nearly brushing his arm, her perfume arriving before she did. When Xavier saw that I was already seated, that I had arrived before the designated time, and that my eyes were moving slowly between him and the woman beside him, he stiffened. He put distance between himself and Vanessa with the practiced ease of a man who had done it many times before.