Chapter 201
Serena
Vanessa threw her head back and laughed, the sound echoing through the pristine showroom like breaking glass. "Oh! I'm so scared!" She pressed a dramatic hand to her chest, her eyes glittering with malice. "What are you going to do, driver boy? Or wait—do you actually think you're Lance fucking Lawson now?"
"Oh, I'm not," Vincent shot back, his composure finally cracking, "but Ms. Vance is Lance's—"
"Vincent." I cut him off sharply, stepping forward to position myself between him and Vanessa. My voice came out colder than I'd intended, but God, I was so tired of this woman's poison. "I've got plenty of experience dealing with this kind of trash."
I turned to face Vanessa fully, letting every ounce of the past seventy-two hours—the fear, the rage, the absolute refusal to be anyone's victim ever again—crystallize in my stare. "You really never learn, do you? How many times do you need to jump out and try to humiliate me before you realize you're the one who ends up looking like a desperate fool? I'm advising you, for your own sake—walk away before you regret this. Don't ruin my good mood while I'm trying to buy a car."
"Fuck that." Vanessa's smile turned vicious as she spun toward the nervous-looking manager hovering near Diana. "That car—the one she just bought—why is the transaction still processing? I ordered it last month."
The manager's face went pale. He glanced between Vanessa and me, clearly calculating which family was more dangerous to offend. Then his survival instinct kicked in. "Diana," he barked, "didn't Ms. Holland put a deposit on that vehicle weeks ago? How could you process another sale?"
"But she didn't—" Diana started, her voice small and confused, eyes darting to her tablet as if the records might save her.
The manager shot her a look that could have melted steel. Diana's protest died in her throat. She turned to me, her professional smile cracking at the edges, and executed a stiff bow. "My apologies, Ms. Vance. There seems to have been a... prior reservation we overlooked."
I stared at Vanessa's triumphant smirk, my hands curling into fists at my sides. Every instinct screamed at me to walk away, to let her have this petty victory, but something in me—something that had survived Felix's warehouse and Wesley's betrayal and my family's poison—refused to back down.
"You know what?" I said, my voice eerily calm. "If that's the car you want, I wouldn't touch it anyway. Suddenly it feels... contaminated."
Vanessa's laugh was pure venom. "Oh, sweetheart, it's not just that one." She planted her hands on her hips, practically vibrating with glee. "Today, you're not buying anything in this showroom. Not a single car. Consider it a personal favor from me to you—saving you from the embarrassment of pretending you can afford our inventory."
Heat flooded my face. Vincent moved closer, his presence solid and protective, but I could feel my control slipping. This woman had been a shadow over my life for three years—Wesley's true love, the one he'd chosen over me again and again, the perfect Holland princess who'd made it her mission to remind me I was nothing.
And now she was doing it again.
"Vanessa—" I started, but my voice came out shaky, and I hated myself for it.
"Oh, what's wrong?" She took a step closer, her perfume cloying and expensive. "Reality hitting a little hard? Did you really think showing up here with Lance's driver and his credit card made you somebody? You're still the same broke, desperate girl from the fallen Vance family. You'll always be—"
"Excuse me." The voice that cut through her tirade was smooth, cold, and unmistakably lethal. "Are we to understand that this dealership has decided it no longer wants to do business with the Lawson family?"
Every head in the showroom turned.
Lance stood in the entrance, backlit by the late afternoon sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He'd shed his jacket at some point, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows in that way that always made my brain short-circuit slightly. But it was his expression that stopped everyone cold—not angry, exactly. Just... arctic. The kind of cold that preceded frostbite.
Vanessa's mouth fell open. "Lance. I—you—what are you doing here?"