Chapter3

Crystal chandeliers cast a soft glow as the exclusive private charity gala in Manhattan entered its core social hour.

I stood in the shadows at the edge of the ballroom, a glass of bourbon in my hand. Around me, the city’s elite drifted past one another with practiced smiles and polished small talk. No one paid any attention to the corner I occupied. That was exactly the kind of quiet I needed.

Then a subtle stir rose near the main entrance.

Emma walked in on Richard’s arm.

She was wearing the couture evening gown bought at an absurd price, chin slightly lifted, eyes sweeping across the room as she soaked in the vanity she mistook for status.

Then her gaze cut through the crowd and landed directly on me.

Her expression froze for a second. Then she strode over in her heels, fast and sharp, as if she had spotted a stain ruining the scenery.

“What are you doing here?” Emma lowered her voice on purpose, but her tone was full of contempt and irritation. “What kind of security is this? How did they let someone like you walk in?”

I held my glass and looked at her calmly, offering no explanation at all. Words were wasted on someone rotten to the core.

“Say something.” Seeing that I ignored her, she took it for guilt. Her voice rose a notch, enough to draw glances from nearby guests. “You think renting a decent suit is enough to sneak into a place like this? A bottom-feeding parasite like you probably came in here hungry, hoping to steal a few free hors d’oeuvres.”

Richard stood beside her, looking me over as if inspecting damaged merchandise. One hand settled around her waist as he put on a show of easy superiority.

“Darling, don’t let someone this irrelevant ruin the evening,” he said. “Just have security throw him out.”

“Security!” Emma raised her hand at once, suddenly emboldened. Her sharp voice cut across the edge of the ballroom. “There’s an uninvited trespasser here!”

Two security guards in black event uniforms heard the call and quickly moved over, faces stern.

They judged value by clothing and jewelry alone. Seeing me standing off to the side, they didn’t ask a single question. One of them reached straight for my shoulder, ready to drag me out by force.

I didn’t even raise my eyelids. I simply continued turning the glass slowly in my hand.

The moment his fingers were about to touch my jacket—

“Stop.”

A woman’s voice sliced in from the side, clean and forceful.

A team of security personnel wearing distinctive insignia pushed through the crowd and took over the scene with immediate authority.

Jessica led them.

She wore a sharply tailored dark business suit and moved forward in high heels without hesitation. Then she lifted her hand and slapped the guard across the face.

The crack was sharp.

The motion was crisp. No wasted movement.

The guard staggered back two steps, one hand over his cheek, too stunned to understand what had just happened.

“Who gave you permission to lay a hand on him?” Jessica’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried enough pressure to force every guard behind him to lower their heads.

Emma was stunned. She looked at Jessica, then at the entirely different class of security surrounding her, and her face tightened.

“And who are you supposed to be?” she snapped. “He snuck in. I told security to throw him out. What’s wrong with that?”

“Throw him out?”

Jessica turned toward her slowly, her eyes locking onto Emma with surgical coldness. She took one step closer. Speaking as the acting representative of the event’s true host, she said with unmistakable disdain,

“Let me correct your ridiculous statement. If there is anyone in this hall tonight who looks like trash, it is absolutely you, not him.”

The force of it made Emma retreat half a step without meaning to. Her face shifted from pale to flushed to pale again, and she immediately turned toward Richard, looking for protection.

But Richard, who had been posturing only moments ago, was now staring at Jessica’s face as if he had seen something impossible. Sweat began to gather visibly on his forehead.

This was Jessica.

In Manhattan’s venture capital circles, her reputation was impossible to ignore. Any financial fraud drifting through that world knew exactly who she was.

Richard no longer cared about Emma’s pleading glance. He shoved her hand aside almost roughly, then hurried toward Jessica so fast he nearly tripped.

“Ms. Jessica, what an unexpected honor to see you here.” He bent forward, nearly bowing, and quickly pulled a neatly folded paper proposal from inside his jacket. “I have an investment opportunity in a high-yield growth window. I’ve been hoping for a chance to present it to the mysterious principal behind you. If I could just have one minute of your time—”

Jessica stopped.

She looked down at him from above, expression unreadable.

Then she extended one gloved hand and slowly took the proposal between her fingers.

A flash of wild excitement lit Richard’s eyes.

The next second—

Riiip.

Jessica tore the document cleanly in half.

Then she kept going.

Without the slightest pause, she shredded the entire proposal into pieces and flung the scraps directly into Richard’s face.

Paper fluttered down around him, onto his shoulders, onto the face that had instantly lost all color.

“You brought rotting assets that should have been dumped in an industrial waste furnace,” Jessica said, her voice carrying across the room with merciless scorn, “and you thought you could ask for funding here? What you’re holding is exactly like the schemes you built it on.”

“Worthless.”

Richard’s face turned ashen. His lips trembled faintly. His arms hung limp at his sides. He couldn’t produce a single word in reply.

Emma, who had expected to watch me humiliated, now stood frozen where she was.

She turned stiffly and stared at the “old money heir” she had been so proud of, now reduced to a beaten stray dog, publicly crushed without the slightest room to resist.

Then, in a daze, she looked back at me.

I was still standing where I had been, my gaze resting on her as calmly as still water, as if everything that had just happened were no more than a faint ripple on the surface. It was the look one might give something already discarded and no longer useful.

That indifference cracked the shell of pride she had been holding together.

Her lips parted, as if she wanted to say something, as if she wanted to reach for that old certainty that I would always accept her without question.

I didn’t give her the chance.

I set my glass down casually on the side table, adjusted my cuff, and turned away. With security clearing the path, I walked straight toward the deeper VIP section of the gala.

Time was running short.

At eight o’clock tomorrow morning, the liquidation company would arrive at her door with the full accounting in hand.

Her illusion of high society was about to end.