Chapter 2 - The Stare of SteelAbove the fallen woman stood Victoria, breathing hard with anger, her diamond necklace trembling against her throat. Her face was flushed with cruel triumph.
“Get out,” Victoria hissed, looking down at her as if she were trash washed up on a beach.
The woman on the floor tried to push herself up. Her left arm shivered under her body weight, her fingers slipping against the wet stone where rain had dripped from her coat.
Victoria took a deliberate step closer, the sharp stiletto heel of her white designer shoe stopping just inches from the fallen woman’s trembling hand.
“People like you dirty my home,” Victoria said, her tone dripping with toxic contempt.
A few bystanders turned their heads, suddenly finding their champagne glasses far more interesting. No one moved to help. In their world, challenging Victoria Sterling was social suicide.
The fallen woman lifted her eyes.
They were wet with unshed tears of physical pain, but there was no fear in them. She did not beg. She did not cry out. She simply held Victoria’s stare with a quiet, penetrating pain—a look so heavy, so unyielding, that the grand room suddenly felt suffocatingly small.
"You shouldn't have done that," the woman in teal whispered softly.
Victoria scoffed, raising her chin. "And what are you going to do about it? Call the police? I own this estate. My fiancé built this empire. You are a nobody in a nurse’s outfit."
Before Victoria could call for security to throw her into the rain, heavy, urgent footsteps echoed from the grand entrance.
A middle-aged man in a dark, tailored suit rushed through the double doors, holding an umbrella and a stack of legal documents. It was Thomas Wright, the chief legal counsel for Vance Real Estate and the head executor of the estate’s property trust.
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Thomas took one step into the lobby, saw the overturned wheelchair, saw the woman lying on the marble floor, and turned deathly pale.
The umbrella slipped from his hands, clattering onto the ground.
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