His expression shifted. The careful mask of indulgence crumbled, replaced by something caught between guilt and a slow-burning anger at being cornered. He chose his next words with the precision of a man defusing a bomb.
"I will be home right after. Please try to understand. Vanessa is a single mother, and she is genuinely sick. What if something happens to her on the way home? She has no one."
I cut him off before he could say another word.
"I understand." My voice was quiet, stripped of everything but the bare, terrible truth. "You want to drive her home because she is sick and cannot take care of herself. While I can very well go home by myself."
"Again with your stupid accusations! It's nothing like that!"
"Then what is it?" Mia's voice held steady, though her hands trembled at her sides. "You and Teodoro both drove here tonight. Why does it have to be you, specifically, who takes her home?"
A flicker of irritation crossed Xavier Salvatore's face. He exhaled through his nose, the sound sharp in the dim foyer of the Salvatore estate, where the chandelier cast fractured light across the marble floor like scattered diamonds.