Margaret’s smile vanished. Julian straightened sharply. Avery finally looked up.
Rosa rushed forward, breath uneven, eyes wild with fear, like someone who’d escaped a nightmare only to run straight into another.
Ethan stared at her, glass still raised. “Rosa,” he said calmly, though his tone carried warning now. “What are you doing?”
Her hands trembled. “Please,” she begged. “Put it down.”
Someone near the bar let out a nervous chuckle—cut short when Ethan glanced their way.
Margaret’s voice was soft and cutting. “Rosa, you’re frightening everyone.”
Ethan placed the glass on a side table. Not because he believed her—yet—but because her fear felt precise. Not hysterical. Not performative. Fear that came from seeing something others hadn’t.
Instinct.
Or the instinct you develop when you build empires and learn how disasters begin quietly.
He stepped toward her. “Explain.”
Rosa’s gaze darted from the glass to Margaret, then back to Ethan. “I saw the bottle earlier,” she whispered. “In the pantry. It wasn’t yours. Not from the locked cabinet.”
A chill crept up Ethan’s spine.
He locked certain bottles away for a reason.