The crystal chandeliers of Le Lumière d'Or cast prisms across Avery Jackson's discontented face as she twirled the stem of her untouched martini. Her friends, a cadre of New York glitterati, clinked glasses and laughed with a practiced air of nonchalance. Yet amidst the opulence, Avery's facade cracked.
"Avy, are you okay?" Concern laced her friend's voice, slicing through the murmur of elite conversations like a scalpel. Avery's eyes flickered, a momentary pause betraying her internal cacophony before the floodgates opened.
"You remember, I was supposed to be married, right?" She spat out the words, her manicured fingers tightening around the glass.
"Yeah, I've been wanting to ask about your marriage to Finn for a while. What happened?" The query hung heavy, ripe with the scent of scandal.
Avery's laugh was a bitter crescendo. "Finn was useless," she declared, flinging the words like daggers. "He is not the owner of Knight Group; can you imagine? Not even the CEO; he was the assistant CEO."
The ladies inhaled sharply, their gasps punctuating the revelation like exclamation points. "Girl, you mean he is a lapdog?" Disbelief painted every syllable.
"Of course," Avery sneered, her scorn as thick as the velvet curtains framing the restaurant windows. "And you know me, I was with Finn because I thought he was the owner of that company. Why would I steal him from Cathleen if I knew he was a useless man?" The last word dripped with venom, an echo of the contempt that coursed through Avery's veins.
Her friends exchanged looks, and the air was now dense with the weight of Avery's unveiled truth. It was a tableau of shock, intrigue, and the omnipresent shadow of familial betrayal that seemed to cling to the Jacksons like a malignant shroud.
Avery's revelation hung in the air like a sulfurous cloud, her words laced with the sting of betrayal. Her friends leaned in, their faces a mix of concern and morbid fascination, eyes wide and mouths slightly agape.
"Girl, what are you going to do?" One friend asked, her voice barely more than a whisper yet loaded with the weight of expectation. At an adjacent table, obscured by the dim lighting and a strategically placed centerpiece, Olivia sat motionless, her ears pricked, seizing every syllable as if it were currency.
Avery's lips curled into a snarl. "My mother and I have been trying to call Cathleen so she could tell us who the owner is," she hissed, "but that bitch always drops the call on us." Avery said, and then went on,
"Can you believe?" Avery continued, slamming her palm against the table, causing silverware to clatter. "The flawless lady I bumped into at the airport was actually my sister Cathleen, and she acted as though she didn't know me."
"What? What do you mean?" The question ricocheted around the table, its urgency palpable.
With a venomous smirk, Avery leaned in closer, as if to share a secret long buried. "I found out yesterday that she is now the new face of Glow Girl." A collective gasp erupted from the table, reverberating through the restaurant's hushed atmosphere.
Olivia's mind raced, her pulse quickening with the thrill of potential chaos. She had heard enough, the gears turning as she pieced together a tapestry woven with deception and resentment. Here, in Avery's sordid tale, lay the perfect plan-a weapon to wield against Cathleen, the woman who dared to marry the enigmatic Xavier Knight.
The tension at Avery's table tightened, a nod to high society's expectations and familial discord. Betrayal wasn't just a word here; it was a currency, traded and bartered among those who understood its power.
"Unbelievable," one of Avery's friends muttered, echoing the sentiments of all who sat at the table of discontent, oblivious to the predator in their midst, watching and waiting for the moment to strike.
The clinking of fine china and the murmur of polite conversation faded into the background as Olivia, with the calculated grace of a panther stalking its prey, slid into the space beside Avery. Her presence was uninvited and unexpected, an intrusion that rippled through the table like a cold draft.
"Good day ladies, I'm Olivia Williams." She flashed a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes as she staked her claim on their attention, pulling up a chair without waiting for an invitation. Her voice was smooth but carried an edge sharp enough to slice through the thick tension already present.
"I see your sister hasn't been completely honest with you, Avery," Olivia stated, leaning forward, her words heavy with implication. The air seemed to constrict around them, charged with the promise of revelations yet to spill from her lips.
"What if I told you that the man you want to marry is the same man Cathleen is married to? Xavier Alexander Knight is the owner of Knight Group International."
Avery's eyes went wide, her breath hitching in her throat as the reality of Olivia's words struck like a physical blow. Disbelief painted her face, contorting her features into a silent question of 'how could this be?'
"How do you know that?" The query came out more as an accusation than genuine curiosity, betraying Avery's rattled composure.
"Because I was dating Xavier," Olivia confessed, the syllables laced with a venomous pride, "and he left me to marry your sister Cathleen Jackson, or should I say West?" Her tone twisted the knife, relishing the moment as she weaponized Cathleen's discarded identity.
The revelation clung to the air like smoke, each word a smoldering ember, threatening to ignite the delicate facade of Avery's social standing. Betrayal was a familiar undercurrent in their lives-a dark and roiling sea beneath a veneer of civility and power plays.
"Ladies, I have somewhere else to be," Avery announced abruptly, her voice edged with a newfound urgency. She pushed back from the table, her departure an abrupt end to Olivia's symphony of discord. Avery's retreat was swift, a blur of designer fabric and unsettled whispers.
Olivia's smile grew, a mischievous curl of her lips that held the satisfaction of a plan set into motion. In the wake of Avery's exit, the echo of shock still clung to the remaining friends, a tangible reminder of the explosive secrets that bound and divided their world.
Olivia remained seated, savoring the aftermath, her gaze tracing Avery's hasty escape. There, amidst the opulent trappings of high society, she had planted the seeds of destruction-a vendetta masked by a congenial facade. As Avery vanished beyond the restaurant's gilded threshold, Olivia already envisioned the unraveling of Cathleen's carefully curated life.