The lunch dragged on like a cruelly extended test of endurance, and River, despite her hours of preparation with Mrs. Stella, felt herself slowly being unspooled by the sheer weight of every glance, every word, every seemingly innocent comment laced with veiled hostility or sugarcoated contempt.
The grand dining room, with its golden chandeliers and polished surfaces, felt less like a place of elegance and more like a stage where she had been thrown without a script, surrounded by seasoned performers who knew exactly when to smile, when to cut, when to draw blood without ever lifting a finger.
Every conversation at the table carried two meanings, one spoken aloud, one lurking underneath. River found herself nodding politely to questions and remarks that twisted through careful rhetoric,
