The day of the dinner party arrived with a weight that settled quietly over the house.
It wasn’t dread exactly. It was something more calculated, the kind of tension that came when everyone involved knew the evening wasn’t about celebration alone, no matter how expensive the house or how polished the invitations looked.
Steven had upgraded.
That was the word everyone used.
A bigger house.
A better neighbourhood.
A more affluent part of town where old money lived behind high hedges and long driveways.
It was a statement.
A declaration of arrival.
And it unsettled Eve.
She stood in front of the mirror, smoothing her dress slowly, deliberately, as though the fabric itself could steady her breathing. She wasn’t thrilled about any of it, the house, the guests, the carefully curated il
