Chapter 4 - The Gavel Falls
Silence descended upon the ballroom like a physical weight. Evelyn’s champagne glass slipped from her gloved fingers, shattering violently across the polished oak floor, a perfect mirror of the spoon dropped the night before.
Elena did not flinch, nor did she look down. Her posture was regal, her dark hair pinned in an immaculate chignon, revealing the faint red shadow on her cheekbone that no powder could fully disguise. Flanking her were two senior partners from the city’s most feared corporate litigation firm, alongside Arthur Vance, the patriarch everyone assumed held supreme power.
Marcus stepped forward, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish. ""Elena? What is this circus? Who bought you that dress?""
Elena paused three paces before him. Her gaze was not filled with rage; it was completely, terrifically blank.
""Miss Vance,"" Arthur corrected Marcus, his voice cutting like a guillotine. ""You are speaking to the chairwoman of the board, Mr. Sterling. The woman who holds seventy percent of your family's uncollateralized corporate debt.""
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Elena tilted her head slightly, studying the man who had let his mother cast her out. ""You told me to get out of your house, Marcus. I did. Now I’ve come to inspect what belongs to mine.""
From the edge of the crowd, a squad of plainclothes detectives stepped into view.
