Fabio’s mother stepped fully into the kitchen, her heels clicking against the tiled floor like a countdown. She didn’t look around. She didn’t need to. Her eyes were locked on Helen with the kind of focus that stripped the air from the room. The room seemed to shrink around her presence, as if everyone instinctively understood that this woman had never been challenged in her life and had no intention of starting now.“Helen Cross,” she repeated, slower this time, tasting the name as if it offended her tongue. “Do you have any idea how disgraceful you look right now?”Helen stiffened, but she did not step away from Adrian. If anything, she leaned closer to him, her hand tightening slightly at his side. That small act only sharpened the woman’s smile.“No,” Fabio’s mother continued, waving a dismissive hand toward Adrian without even looking at him, “don’t hide behind that thing. You are a Cross. Or at least, you were raised as one. Which makes this… behavior,” she glanced pointedly at H

Alora stepped out from behind the stainless-steel doors like she had been summoned by design.Not rushed. Not shy. Not surprised.She moved the way women trained in privilege moved... like the world had already agreed to make space for her. Her apron was tied snugly around her waist, accentuating hips that were unapologetically feminine; her white blouse was pressed clean, with sleeves rolled just enough to show skin without looking careless. There was something deliberate in how she stood… her shoulders were arched backwards, her chin slightly raised, her lips curved into a smile that wasn’t really from the heart, but that had been practiced for decades.Hot. Sexy. Composed.Not loud about it — which made it worse.She looked like someone who had been coded, trained, groomed to sit beside men who signed papers worth millions and never flinched, props to her mother, Ruth Brown.Alora was the kind of girl wealthy families loved to show off at charity dinners. The kind who knew when to

The ten-minute break ended the way most uncomfortable pauses did — without warning and without mercy.The lights above the main kitchen brightened in stages, not all at once, as though the room itself needed time to recover from what had just happened. Conversations that had been hissing in corners died mid-sentence. Cameramen adjusted their rigs. Producers whispered urgently into headsets. Somewhere near the back, a crew member dropped a clipboard and flinched at the sound, earning a sharp look from his supervisor.Entity returned to the center of the stage with a smile that was a fraction too wide and eyes that refused to settle anywhere for too long.The audience noticed.Some clapped. Some didn’t. A few voices cut through the noise, sharp and unkind.“Test the dress!”“Scammer!”“Don’t forget your promise!”The words came fast and uneven, not loud enough to shut the show down, but loud enough to remind her — and everyone else —that the internet… the world.. never forgot, and neith

By the time Entity walked back onto the stage, the air inside Diamond Mirage had shifted in a way that didn’t immediately make sense but felt wrong all the same. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t tense in the obvious way people expected when eliminations were about to happen. It was lighter than before. Too light. Like a room where the verdict had already been decided behind closed doors, and everyone else was just there to watch it be announced.Entity knew it too.She moved differently now. Her chin was higher, her shoulders relaxed, her smile wide and unrestrained. The earlier embarrassment about the dress, the diamond tester, the public humiliation Adrian had dragged her through… all of that was gone. Replaced with something close to triumph. She looked sharp tonight. Dangerous, even. Her dress shimmered under the lights, and she made sure to turn just enough for the cameras to catch it from every flattering angle. Anyone watching would assume she had simply recovered her confidence.Any

“Murderer!”The word didn’t come from one mouth. It came from many, crashing into each other, multiplying as it bounced across the hall like a sickness. Someone yelled it from the left, another from the balcony, another closer to the stage, until it no longer sounded like an accusation but a sentence already passed.Adrian stood there as if the word had nothing to do with him.He didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. Didn’t even turn his head immediately when the first security guard reached for his arm. His eyes stayed on the judge writhing on the floor, the man’s face twisted in agony, his hands clutching his stomach as if trying to hold himself together. Adrian had seen pain before. Real pain. This wasn’t staged. Whatever had been done to that sauce, whatever had been hidden inside it, had been calculated to hurt — not to kill immediately, but to destroy reputations first.That was when Dorovan moved.He didn’t rush. He didn’t shout from where he stood. He walked forward slowly, deliberatel