He Called the Waitress His Wife at the Gala
CHAPTER 1 - THE NAME THAT STOPPED TIME
"I'm so sorry, sir!"
Clara barely heard her own voice over the thin rattle of glass on her tray.
The banquet hall glowed around her. Cream marble floors. Gold carved walls. Crystal chandeliers throwing soft light over ivory tablecloths, silver cutlery, pale flowers, and towers of champagne she would never taste. She kept her eyes down, like she had all evening, moving along the edge of wealth as if she were part of the furniture.
Then she turned too quickly.
A shoulder. A sharp breath. A few drops of champagne spilled onto a deep charcoal-gray vest.
She froze.
The man in front of her went still in a way that made the whole room seem to lean toward him.
He had dark brown, slightly unruly curls. A trace of beard. The kind of face she had once known in morning light, in train windows, in cheap apartment mirrors. The kind of face she had forced herself to forget.
"Clara... is that really you?"
Her throat closed.
At his side stood a blonde woman in a wine-red silk gown, one hand looped possessively through his arm. Her green eyes narrowed at once.
Clara's fingers tightened around the tray until her knuckles turned white. "I'll clean this up. Please, let me step aside."
But her body had already betrayed her. Tears burned down her cheeks before she could stop them.
The man stared as if he were seeing a ghost.
The blonde woman lifted her chin. "Who is this waitress? Why are you looking at her like that?"
He looked at Clara first. Not at the stain. Not at the room. At Clara.
Then he slowly pulled his arm free.
"Because she is not just a waitress... she is my wife."
A spoon clattered somewhere across the hall.
Clara shook her head at once. "No."
But before she could move, the event manager rushed over, pale and furious, and hissed, "Clara, come with me. Now."
As she was led away, she heard the man behind her say one word that made her knees nearly buckle.
"Matteo," he said, as if reminding her. "My name is Matteo."
She hadn't heard that name in three years.
And she had his death notice folded in her suitcase upstairs.
