Chapter 100

Chapter 100

The moment those words landed, the entire room went quiet.

Too blunt.

Too brutal.

And everyone could tell — those words weren't meant for Carroll at all. They were a public slap, delivered through this moment, right to certain people's faces.

The color drained from Lucas's face.

An outsider. Using her name. Making moves that were never his to make.

Three sentences, strung together, amounted to calling him out in front of everyone. He was the one who'd pulled Lena from tonight's lineup. He was the one trying to use the Schumann name and the Carrow family to prop up the Davis family's image. And now, without the real party ever showing up, their position had been made perfectly clear — delivered through someone else's mouth, in front of the whole room.

Schumann, standing off to the side, finally let out a quiet laugh.

It was soft, but just loud enough for the people nearby to catch.

"Well said," he remarked, his tone flat. "Some people really do love outsmarting themselves."

The moment he said it, Lucas felt a chill run down his back.

It wasn't the dig itself that scared him. It was that Schumann had finally stopped pretending — and used that moment to make his position crystal clear. Everyone in Chicago knew the Davis family had barely been holding their reputation together lately, largely because word had been circulating that Lena was close to Skyline Group, and some even suspected she was the specific thing Schumann actually cared about.

But now, not only had Schumann refused to cover for the Davis family — he'd turned around and kicked them while they were down.

Nobody understood what that meant better than Lucas.

Carol stood a short distance away, her expression shifting, saying nothing.

She'd never been able to figure out who was standing behind Lena. Even now, the real person hadn't shown their face — but between the gift and the message alone, the answer was clear enough. Lena was not the simple figure she appeared to be on the surface. If anything, whoever was behind her was even more formidable than the rumors had let on.

Orodo stood further back, watching the scroll and the woman who had spoken, his eyes narrowing slightly. Something about the whole thing struck him as oddly familiar.

Others might not see it. But to him, the style was unmistakable.

No direct appearance. A perfectly timed strike, landed exactly when it would hurt most. However you looked at it, it had a very specific person's fingerprints all over it.

That thought made Orodo smile quietly to himself. It seemed the real entertainment of tonight's birthday banquet was still to come.

Having said her piece, the woman finally stopped lingering. She gave Carroll one last nod and said, "The gift has been delivered. We won't take up any more of your time."

She turned and walked out, clean and unhurried, without a backward glance. The dozen or so people behind her fell into step at once. In moments, the group had withdrawn from the hall, leaving only the gift box and the scroll resting in plain sight where everyone could see them.

---

The guests who'd been in line to present their gifts had gone quiet. Nobody was rushing to step forward. Everyone understood the mood had been completely thrown off — anything offered now would just look like it was trying to measure up.

It was Carroll who recovered first, waving a hand with a smile. "Come now, don't just stand there. A gift is a gift, big or small — it's the thought that counts. Tonight is about good company. Don't let a little detour spoil the fun."

That gave everyone an out, and the laughter that followed helped the atmosphere piece itself back together, however loosely.

But Lucas could no longer hold his ground the way he had before. He could feel it clearly — the eyes drifting his way, not openly, but in that particular way people look when they're holding back a smirk, sizing you up, quietly enjoying your humiliation.

He knew. From this moment on, the most embarrassing person at tonight's banquet wasn't whoever had brought a cheap gift. It was him — the man who was supposed to represent the Davis family — publicly slapped by Lena from across town, with nowhere to hit back.

---

On the other side of the city, Lena glanced down at her phone. A message had just come in, one line: "Gift delivered. Message passed along."

She stared at it for a moment, something flickering in her expression.

Ethan came back in from the balcony, saw her face, and asked, "Done?"

"Done." She nodded and set her phone down. "Your people are a bit more dramatic than I expected."

Ethan sat down across from her, his expression calm. "If they're not, people won't remember it."

Lena looked at him and almost laughed.

She knew he was right. If tonight had just been a quiet gift sent on her behalf, the crowd would have written it off as her trying to save face. It wouldn't have registered. But doing it this way — saying what needed to be said, out loud, in front of everyone, leaving Lucas nowhere to stand — that's what would stick. Years from now, when people brought up tonight, the first thing they'd remember was who walked away humiliated.

"Lucas is probably furious," she said quietly.

"Good," Ethan replied.

She looked at him, and thought again about the slap she'd taken upstairs earlier that day. That dull, lingering sting in her chest — his two words had, somehow, smoothed it over just a little.

"Did you know from the start that he'd pull me from the lineup?"

"More or less," Ethan said. "After what happened last night, the Davis family's first instinct was never going to be protecting you. They were always going to calculate your value first. Once that's how they're thinking, it follows naturally — they'd decide you shouldn't be the face of things today. Too much risk of you holding the reins."

Lena said nothing.

Because that was exactly the part that had left her cold. Ethan hadn't figured it out because he knew Lucas specifically. He'd figured it out because people like Lucas all follow the same logic. They don't ask if you're hurting. They ask how much use you still have.

"So what's your next move?" she asked.

"Let them panic," he said. "After tonight's gift, the Davis family is going to want to get closer to you more than ever — and they're going to be desperate to figure out who's behind you. But the more desperate they are, the more mistakes they'll make."

"You're waiting for them to fall apart on their own?"

"Yes."

Lena was quiet for a moment, then asked, "What about the Carrow family?"

Ethan glanced at her. "Carroll is sharp enough. He won't make a move anytime soon. But the people around him — that's a different story."

"Carol?"

"She'll dig around," Ethan said. "But she seems more interested in understanding the situation than in using you to climb. The ones who are actually dangerous aren't usually the ones asking questions out in the open — they're the ones watching quietly, saying nothing, and waiting for the right moment to move in."

Something settled coldly in Lena's chest.

She knew exactly who he meant.