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.
I noticed it immediately. The pendant was gone from Vanessa's neck.
Without a word, I rose and followed my mother-in-law toward the kitchen to help with the preparations, as was expected of me. As was always expected of me.
Xavier moved quickly. By the time I returned to the dining room, he had taken the seat beside mine. He smiled at me, that gentle, disarming smile he wielded like a concealed weapon, and reached over to brush my hair to one side. His fingers were warm against my neck as he clasped the diamond pendant into place, the cold stone settling against my collarbone. A performance. A show of devotion staged for every pair of eyes in the room.
"This must be your first time wearing diamonds." His voice was soft, intimate, pitched for the audience but dressed up as a private confession. "Don't worry. Next time I'll get you the sapphires you love."
Then, without a flicker of shame in those dark eyes, he lied to my face with the smoothness of a man born to it.
"I lost it at the compound. After we spoke that night, I realized it was gone and went back to search for it. Tore the place apart looking."
The pendant sat against my throat like a collar. Like a chain. The weight of it was suffocating, and not because of its size. I reached up, unclasped it, and set it on the table without a word.
The room went still.
"Mia, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Xavier's voice dropped, the gentleness evaporating like mist off hot asphalt.
"To think she's so ungrateful," someone whispered, not quietly. "No wonder Auntie can't stand her."