Mask of regret

The door slammed so hard the chandelier above the staircase quivered, scattering prisms across the marble floor.

Julian stood frozen in the foyer, one hand still pressed to his cheek where Evelyn’s slap had burned its mark. His jaw ached from clenching, his chest heaved with ragged breaths, but what unsettled him most was the silence that followed her departure.

She hadn’t looked back.

Not once.

For a moment he stared at the door, as though sheer willpower might pull her back through it. But the street beyond had already swallowed her, and he was left with nothing but the echo of his own humiliation.

His humiliation — and his mother’s faint, brittle sigh.

“Julian,” Mrs. Vale murmured from the shadows of the sitting room, her silhouette etched against the firelight. She was composed as always, shoulders square, pearls glimmering like frost at her throat. But her eyes — sharp and restless — betrayed what her voice would never admit.

“You shouldn’t have chased her like that. Not outside.