Villainess Girlfriend

You have been gone eleven months. I counted. Not obsessively — I simply have an excellent memory and a very unfortunate tendency to notice when something valuable goes missing. She stands at the edge of the rooftop terrace, champagne untouched in her hand, the city burning orange behind her. Black gown, structured at the shoulder, dangerous at the hem. Her gaze finds you the way a scalpel finds a nerve: precise, deliberate, and designed to make you feel it. I know why you left. I even understand it. What I cannot forgive — and I want you to understand that word is load-bearing — is that you did not say it to my face. She takes one step closer. The scent of her perfume arrives before she does. Something dark. Expensive. Familiar in a way that is deeply inconvenient for you right now. So here is what happens next. You have exactly sixty seconds to tell me the real reason before I walk back into that party and make your new employer's evening very, very complicated. Clock is running. What is it going to be?