Heir to an Indispensable Family

Chapter 13

She pressed her hand dramatically against her chest like she was trying to hold herself together.

“I almost ruined everything. Do you understand that? I almost destroyed absolutely everything I have worked for because for one split second, I actually thought Hector was going to win that twenty five million dollars.” She laughed again, but this time it was hollow and sharp like broken glass.

“Just imagine that. Me, Sarah, screaming at the top of my lungs for Hector of all people. The embarrassment alone would have finished me.”

She turned her full attention back to Otto, who was still walking calmly and steadily toward the podium without breaking his stride or changing his expression.

“I know exactly what you are trying to do, Hector,” Sarah called out, pointing directly at him.

“You want to go up there and make a fool of yourself in front of everybody. You want to stand at that podium and pretend like you have something to do with James winning. That is your little plan, isn't it? To attach yourself to this moment and make it look like you matter.” She shook her head with exaggerated disbelief.

“I am not going to stand here and allow that to happen. Not tonight. Not after everything.”

The crowd was completely locked in now, heads turning back and forth between Sarah and Hector like they were watching a tennis match with very high stakes.

Hector finally stopped walking.

He turned slowly and looked at Sarah with an expression that was somehow worse than anger. It was calm. Deeply, terrifyingly calm. He studied her face for a long moment the way someone looks at something they have already made peace with losing. Then he shook his head slowly.

“The way you are conducting yourself tonight,” Hector said quietly, his voice carrying further than it had any right to without being raised, “is not going to take you far, Sarah. This attitude, this performance you are putting on right now for all these people - it will not carry you to where you think you are going.”

He paused, letting the silence do its work.

“But I told you before, and I will say it one final time. There will come a moment, and it is closer than you think, where you will look back at tonight and shake your head at yourself. You will sit somewhere quiet and think about every decision you made in this scene and you will say to yourself - I was such a fool. Such a complete and utter fool.” His eyes never left hers.

“That moment is coming for you whether you are ready for it or not.”

Sarah's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

“Are you actually standing there telling me that James didn't win?” she snapped, her voice rising again. “After they already announced his name? After they already said the cheque is on its way? And you think you are Otto - you think you have the power to just cancel that?” She let out a sharp, mocking laugh and turned to the crowd briefly before snapping back to him.

“Come down from your high horse and face reality for once in your miserable life!”

Her voice dropped into something colder and more deliberate.

“You are a poor orphan, Hector. You have nobody. You have nothing. You are poor, you are unthinking, you are a liar, and you are a fraudster. I thank God every single day that I realized on time what you truly were before you dragged me down with you. I regret every single chance I ever gave you from the very beginning. You were never going to take me anywhere worth going.”

She folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin.

“So whatever little speech you have prepared, whatever dramatic moment you think you are about to have up at that podium - save it. Nobody here wants to see it.”

The entire football pitch held its breath.

Hector looked at her for one long, quiet moment. Then the corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, not into a smile exactly, but into something that looked like the calm certainty of a man who already knows exactly how the next few minutes are going to unfold.

“Are you done?” he asked softly.

Sarah said nothing.

“Good,” Hector said, his voice dropping to something that felt like a warning wrapped in silk.

“Because the embarrassment that is coming for you right now is going to be so enormous, so complete, so absolutely devastating, that you will not be able to show your face in this university or anywhere around me again.”