Chapter 4

The frenzy over the cornflower-blue sapphire still hadn’t faded.

Thud.

A dull strike abruptly cut through the noise.

Master Sterling slammed his pure silver cane onto the marble floor. He remained seated in his purple velvet-backed chair. The iron-green on his face had been replaced by something even more frightening—absolute cold.

“A splendid trick.” Sterling gave two slow claps, his voice like a frozen lake. “A blind cat catching a dead rat can amuse amateurs. But this is Mayfair—not a circus for street magic.”

The hall fell silent at once.

The tycoons who had just screamed bids at me immediately wiped their expressions clean and stepped back with reverence. Under the absolute titan of the trade, no one dared touch Sterling’s reverse scale for the sake of a gutter boy.

I stared at him coldly. “The facts are on the table. Your appraisal is worthless.”

“How dare you!” the auction supervisor barked. “How dare you speak to the master like that!”

Sterling lifted a hand, stopping him. His icy blue eyes locked on me; a cruel poison-light flickered in them. A tyrant who had ruled Europe’s jewelry world for decades would never allow me to walk out alive wearing a winner’s posture.

He was going to crush me here—publicly, before every member of the ruling class.

“Since you’re so confident in your eye,” Sterling leaned forward slightly, his tone baited with death, “then let’s play a real appraisal game—one fit for upper society. Supervisor, bring out tonight’s finale.”

Deep in the hall, heavy gears began to turn.

Four senior security men in white gloves pushed a bulletproof glass display cart draped in black velvet onto the dais.

When the spotlight hit it, the entire hall was drowned in a brilliance that nearly blinded.

It was an enormous, heavy jewelry casket in an eighteenth-century medieval style.

Pure gold, carved into tangled vine patterns—densely set with dozens of massive pigeon-blood rubies and royal-blue sapphires. Every stone was cut flawlessly, throwing off dazzling fire under the lights.

This wasn’t an antique anymore.

It was a moving treasury.

“Bourbon France—an unrivaled treasure Louis XV once gifted to his mistress,” Sterling said, reclining arrogantly, voice ringing through the hall. “Opening bid: one million pounds.”

One million.

The number made everyone suck in a breath.

“Your thief father—dirty hands aside—did have a bit of an eye for real versus fake,” Sterling looked down at me with pure contempt. “Now let me see whether you inherited any professional skill at all… or only his filth.”

He snapped his fingers. The supervisor hurried over with a pure-white document.

“A wager contract,” Sterling’s voice coiled around my throat like a snake. “Give a full public evaluation of this casket. If you correctly state its year, origin, and the purity of every gemstone, I will acknowledge your ability—and I’ll personally pay for it and gift this million-pound treasure to you.”

He paused. The sneer on his lips widened.

“But if you get even one word wrong—you take on a debt of one million pounds. And I will use the guild’s highest authority to issue a permanent legal blacklist against you in every auction house across Europe.”

A wave of sharp inhalations—then whispers.

“Sterling is going to destroy him.”

“Serves him right for challenging class law.”

“A million-pound debt—he’ll slave his whole life in the East End.”

My mentor tugged frantically at my sleeve, voice shaking apart. “Sean! Get down and apologize! Are you insane? That’s a national treasure-level piece. Misjudge even one accent stone and you’re finished!”

I ignored him.

Back down?

Twenty years ago, my father backed down once before power—and they nailed him to disgrace with a crime that didn’t exist. Today, even if there was an abyss ahead, I would never bow my head to the man who ruined my family.

I snatched the gold-plated pen from the supervisor and signed my name at the bottom without hesitation.

The scratch of the nib across paper sounded unnaturally loud in the hall.

“Good.” Sterling smiled coldly. “At least your stupidity has spine.”

I tossed the pen aside and walked toward the bulletproof cart under the entire room’s look of watching a dead man.

Closer.

Closer.

The jewel casket expanded in my view. The red-and-blue aurora of reflected light nearly burned my eyes.

I drew a slow breath, closed my eyes, and focused every ounce of attention onto my hearing.

In my twenty years of experience, the older and more valuable a gem was, the clearer and prouder its “voice.” They bragged about bloodlines, complained about craftsmanship, even argued over which of them was the brightest star.

A royal piece set with dozens of top-grade stones should have been a deafening symphony inside my head.

I pushed my perception to the limit.

One second.

Two.

Three.

My breath stopped.

No sound.

Nothing at all.

No ruby’s arrogant boasting. No sapphire’s cold scrutiny. Not even the metallic resonance a gold base should have had.

In my mind there was only a dead, hair-raising silence.

In my world, that absolute silence meant one thing—

Fake.

All fake.

Those massive stones—flawless, fiery, dazzling—weren’t natural gems at all.

They were bio-optic glass imitations manufactured with extremely advanced modern techniques.

They had never slept for millions of years inside the earth.

So they had no soul.

And therefore, no voice.

Cold sweat soaked the back of my cheap suit instantly.

I snapped my eyes open, stared through the harsh spotlight, and locked onto Sterling on the dais.

Sterling held his champagne. In those cruel blue eyes flickered a murderous light that said he had anticipated everything.

He knew.

This titan of Europe’s jewelry world absolutely knew the finale piece was a total counterfeit.

A perfect, closed death trap.

If I feared his authority and followed his lead, declaring it a “rare treasure,” he would expose it on the spot and use “appraisal error” to saddle me with a million-pound debt—destroying me completely.

But if I called it fake in public—

this was Mayfair’s top blind auction. He had endless professional jargon and authority witnesses to rebut me. Unless I physically pried stones from the setting and performed destructive testing on the spot, I had no proof. And with only words, I’d still be branded with “malicious slander” and face prison.

“What is it, genius appraiser?” Sterling looked down at me with the smug cruelty of a cat playing with a mouse. “Why are your hands shaking? Or has your pitiful little knowledge been so frightened by this royal artwork that you can’t even speak?”

Drip.

A bead of cold sweat fell from my forehead and struck the marble.

The pressure became a solid slab of lead, crushing down on my spine until it was hard to breathe. In that moment, the invisible wall of class became the sharpest meat grinder, tightening around my throat bit by bit.