Heir to an Indispensable Family

Chapter 14

The instant Hector finished speaking, Sarah laughed.

It was not soft laughter. It was not embarrassed laughter. It was not even the kind of laughter that came from genuine humor. It was the hard, brittle laughter of someone who had heard enough, tolerated enough, and finally reached the point where outrage had become too large to contain in silence.

She looked directly at him, her eyes bright with contempt.

“You crazy fool,” she said.

“You actually think this useless sweet talk of yours is going to deter me? You think it is going to stop me from doing what I truly want to do? That is not going to be possible. Never. Your sweet talk will never stop me. Never.”

Her expression hardened even more as she continued.

“Are you a fool? Are you a bastard? Because right now, I honestly cannot understand what kind of person still stands here saying these things to me as if anything can still be changed. That is final. That is it. I know what I want, and I know what is best for me. And no matter what you did before, and no matter what you do now, it is not going to work. It will never work. Whatever you are imagining between us, whatever fantasy you are still holding onto, it does not exist anymore. It is dead.”

She paused only to take a breath, though not to calm down.

“I can't even imagine it,” she went on, her voice full of disgust.

“I cannot even imagine how I fell for this dirty trick of yours. I still cannot get my head around it. Every time I think about it, it disgusts me even more. So if you know what is good for you now, simply get the fucking hell out of my presence immediately. Just go. Disappear. Vanish. Because if you spoil one more thing for me again, I am not going to take it lightly with you.”

There was nothing uncertain about her tone. No softness. No opening left for interpretation. She had shut every door with her own hands and made sure he heard the locks turn.

But before she could say another word, Hector moved.

He did not argue back, he did not defend himself.

He did not even look like a man who had just been publicly dismissed.

Instead, he turned and started walking toward the podium.

At once, the room reacted, People who had only been half-paying attention before now turned fully. Heads tilted. Brows furrowed. Whispering rose in quick waves.

"What the hell is he doing?"

" Why is he going toward the podium?"

"Is he really trying to do more damage to himself?"

"Has he gone mad?"

What the hell is this bastard doing?

The tension spread fast, because there was something deeply unsettling about a man moving calmly toward a public stage after being cut down so openly. It was not the expected response. A humiliated man was supposed to leave, or shout, or break down, or become visibly reckless. But Hector did none of that. He simply walked.

And that made people uneasy.

Still, the crowd quickly reached its own conclusions.

No matter what he was planning, it would end badly for him.

They would definitely kick him out.

He would definitely be thrown out and disgraced.

He would definitely be humiliated in front of everyone.

That was the verdict the crowd silently formed almost as one. Whatever this was, whatever Hector thought he was about to do, the end of it would be public embarrassment.

Sarah, now visibly alarmed by the direction he was taking, raised her voice toward James.

“James!” she called sharply.

“I don't know what this fool is coming to the podium to do, I don't know, but just know that he's a troublemaker and he just wants to cause trouble. I told him it's you I love, not him, and what I said earlier was a mistake, and he said he wouldn't allow that, that he coming up to say something.”

The moment James saw Hector approaching the podium, his jaw tightened.

It was a small sign, but a telling one. He had been composed until then, wearing the confidence of a man already crowned by the room, already elevated by public approval and expectation. But this....this was something different. Hector's movement toward the stage was not welcome, and worse, it was unpredictable.

James's eyes narrowed slightly, he clearly wanted to stop it.

He was about to say something.

But before he could, before a single word could come out of his mouth, another movement interrupted the moment.

The announcer the same one who had earlier announced James as the winner of the twenty-five million dollars stepped forward with formal precision, bent ninety degrees, and handed the Mac over to Hector.