The black card still rested between her fingers.
Only now, none of it looked like victory.
It looked like evidence.
“Proceed,” I said.
Sabrina dropped the card onto the counter as if it had burned her.
“No.
Wait.”
Margot nodded once to security.
Nobody touched Sabrina.
Nobody needed to.
The security team simply moved closer to the exits and asked that the relevant parties remain available while the incident was documented and the merchandise was secured.
Saleswomen began collecting the boxes Sabrina had ordered.
One lifted the Riviera diamond case from the counter.
Sabrina reached toward it instinctively.
“That’s mine.”
The consultant paused.
Margot answered.
“No merchandise connected to the disputed transactions is leaving the premises tonight.”
Sabrina’s hand fell.
The same women who had been carrying gowns behind her twenty minutes earlier were now quietly returning them to garment racks.
The reversal was almost painfully orderly.
No shouting.
No shattered glass.
No public slap.
Just item after item disappearing from the fantasy she had built around herself.
A handbag was removed from a chair.
Shoeboxes were taken from beside Preston.
A diamond bracelet was unclasped from Sabrina’s wrist.
The consultant asked her to remove the Riviera necklace.
Her fingers shook against the clasp.
She could not open it.
The consultant helped her.
Nobody laughed.
That somehow made it worse.
Preston came toward me.
“Claire, we need to talk.”
I looked at him.
That afternoon, those words might have meant something.
Now they sounded like another request for me to protect him from a situation he had created.
“You told me not to make a scene,” I said.
His eyes moved toward the people watching us.
“Not here.”
“I didn’t make one.”
He had no answer.
That was the truth he could not escape.
