After Madame left, the silence of the mansion wrapped around me tightly. It felt heavier than usual, as if her presence had lingered long after the door shut behind her. The air was thick with everything she had said and everything she refused to say. I stood there for several minutes, unable to move, my thoughts dragging in a hundred directions.

Five hundred thousand dollars. A dinner to impress a senator. A lie dressed up as unity. A performance staged for the sake of a project that already ...