“Lily, no!” I gasped, lunging after her, but it was too late. She collided with Ethan’s legs, wrapping her arms around his expensive trousers.

Ethan looked down. The smile vanished from his face, replaced not by guilt, not by panic, but by a look of sheer, unmasked annoyance.

The silence that followed Lily’s cry was deafening. It seemed to suck the oxygen right out of the Save-Mart.

Ethan peeled Lily off his leg as if she were a piece of lint. He didn’t kneel. He didn’t hug her. He simply adjusted the cuff of his gold watch—a Patek Philippe I had never seen before—and looked at me.