Chapter 19 Galla
“Then let her try, I’m not a clause in a contract. And I don’t share,” Sophia whispered.
Alex’s eyes darkened, relief and hunger colliding. He kissed her slowly, deliberately, as if he was sealing something permanent. When they parted ways with their foreheads still touching, he murmured against her lips.
"The gala begins at eight o'clock. The midnight vote will determine whether I keep my company or lose it to her forever. Sophia smiled sharply and fearlessly.
“Good thing I own a red dress that makes men forget their own names.”
Alex laughed, the sound ragged and astonished and utterly hers.
“Wear it, and when they all look at you tonight, they’ll finally understand why empires fall.”
The next day.
The Langford ballroom at Claridge’s glittered like a weapon. Chandeliers dripped diamonds. Champagne fizzed in crystal flutes. Every tuxedo and evening gown in the room cost more than a car.
And every head that turned belonged to them the moment Alex walked in with Sophia on his arm. The dress was sin in silk, scarlet, backless, and cut on the bias so it poured over her body like liquid fire. A slit climbed to mid-thigh, flashing the faint fingerprint bruises he’d left that morning every time she moved. Her neck and collarbones were a gallery of his marks, no concealer tonight. The only jewelry she wore was the faint teeth imprint at the base of her throat and the possessive curl of Alex’s hand at the small of her back.
Victoria stood at the top of the grand staircase, white gown against the black marble like a queen on a chessboard. Her gaze locked on Sophia and went arctic. Alex felt Sophia’s spine straighten under his palm. She leaned in, lips brushing his ear.
“Showtime.”
They descended the stairs together. Cameras flashed. Whispers rippled outward like a dropped stone in still water.
“Who is she?”
“That’s not Victoria.”
“He brought a date to the vote?”
“Look at her neck, good God.”
Victoria met them at the bottom step, smile polished to a lethal sheen.
“Alex,” she greeted, voice sweet enough to rot teeth.
“You’re late.” He didn’t slow his stride.
“Traffic.”
Victoria’s eyes flicked to Sophia.
“And you brought… entertainment.”
Sophia smiled, slow and lethal. “I prefer the term ‘decisive advantage.”
A muscle twitched in Victoria’s jaw. The orchestra swelled into the next song. Alex extended his hand to Sophia without looking at Victoria again.
“Dance with me.”
He led her onto the floor. The crowd parted like the Red Sea.
One of his hands settled low on her bare back, the other laced through hers. They moved like they’d been built for it, close, predatory, every turn designed to remind every person watching exactly who he’d spent the last twenty-four hours inside.
Victoria watched from the edge, knuckles white around her champagne flute.
Halfway through the song, Alex dipped Sophia low, mouth brushing the bruise on her throat in full view of three hundred people. When he brought her back up, her lipstick was smudged, his tie was askew, and the message was crystal clear.
Mine.
The vote was called. Shareholders filed into the adjoining salon. Victoria cornered Alex in the corridor outside, voice low and venomous.
“Last chance. Walk in there with me, sign the papers, and we forget this ever happened. Refuse, and I trigger the poison pill. You lose everything.”
Alex looked down at her, really looked, and felt nothing but exhaustion.
“I already have everything,” he said.
He turned to go. Victoria grabbed his arm. Nails digging in.
“She’ll never survive this world. I was bred for it. She’s a novelty you’ll tire of by Christmas.”
Alex peeled her fingers off one by one.
“Maybe, but I’d rather burn it all down with her than spend one more second freezing next to you.”
He walked into the salon. Sophia was already there, perched on the edge of a table, legs crossed, red dress riding high. She raised a brow.
“Well?”
Alex pulled the revised proxy statement from his jacket, the one he’d had his lawyers draft at 4 a.m. in a Paris hotel room while Sophia slept curled against his side. It transferred irrevocable voting control of his shares to a blind trust with only one named beneficiary, Sophia E. Hart.
He slid it across the table.
“Vote however you want. But from this second forward, she decides what happens to my empire.”
He gasps, murmurs. Victoria went corpse-pale.
Sophia didn’t even glance at the papers. She stood, walked straight to Alex, and kissed him in front of every board member, every investor, and every gossip columnist in London.
When she pulled back, her lipstick was on his mouth, and her voice carried to the last row.
“I vote we keep him, and we burn the old rules,” she said clearly.
The room erupted Victoria stood frozen, diamonds glittering like broken ice at her throat. Alex wrapped an arm around Sophia’s waist, lips against her temple.
“Empires fall tonight,” he murmured, echoing his own words from hours earlier.
Sophia smiled, sharp and radiant.
“Good, let’s build a better one on the ashes.
At the same time, a lecturer recognized Sophia. The eruption of voices in the salon suddenly stuttered, then died.
A tall, silver-haired man in a midnight-blue velvet dinner jacket stepped forward from the second row of shareholders, blinking like he’d seen a ghost.
“Sophia?”
Dr. Julian Harrow, her International Political Economy lecturer, the one whose 9 a.m. seminars she’d missed for the last forty-eight hours, stared openly.
“Sophia Hart?”
The entire room pivoted toward her. Sophia felt Alex’s arm tighten fractionally around her waist, but she didn’t flinch. She turned, red dress flaring like a matador’s cape, and gave Harrow the same serene smile that had once talked her way out of a late paper.
“Hello, Prof. Julian, fancy seeing you here,” she said, calm as anything.
Harrow’s gaze darted from her kiss-swollen lips to the bruises blooming on her throat to the man whose company she’d apparently just seized control of. His mouth opened, then closed before opening again.
"You are the beneficiary?” He finally succeeded.