Heir to an Indispensable Family

Chapter 19

The laughter that erupted from the crowd was absolutely deafening.

People were doubling over, grabbing each other's shoulders, pointing at Hector with tears streaming down their faces from laughing so hard. Some of them had already started mimicking what they predicted was coming next, putting on exaggerated dramatic voices and throwing their arms wide.

“Oh, I am the DIRECTOR of the Ross Corporation!”

“I am the REPRESENTATIVE and I hereby cancel this lottery!”

“Twenty five million dollars? CANCELLED! Because I said so!”

More laughter. Louder this time. Rolling through the crowd in waves that kept building on top of each other.

James soaked it all in like sunlight. He turned and faced the crowd with the confidence of a man who had already won every battle worth winning tonight and knew it. His smile was wide and sharp and completely without mercy.

“You see?” he announced to everybody, spreading his arms out. “We know you already, Hector. We know EXACTLY what you are.” He turned back to face Hector directly, his voice dropping into something more personal and more venomous. “I know why you're really standing up there. I know exactly what is eating you alive right now.”

He took a step closer, lowering his voice just enough to add weight to every word.

“You are bitter. You are completely and utterly bitter because I came from nowhere and took Sarah right out of your hands. YOUR Sarah. And I didn't just take her — I made her deny you. I made her humiliate you in front of everybody. I made her scream that she didn't know you.” He tilted his head with mock sympathy.

“That must have hurt. I genuinely cannot imagine how much that must have hurt.”

He let that sit for exactly one second before twisting the knife further.

“And then, to top absolutely everything off, I walked into this lottery tonight and collected twenty five million dollars that the whole world thought was going to be yours.” He clicked his tongue slowly.

“I know you thought you were going to win it. I also know Sarah thought you were going to win it. That is why she was still floating back and forth like a leaf that cannot decide which direction the wind is blowing. But the moment she realized it was me — the moment that name came through that microphone — she came running straight back.”

He shook his head with a laugh.

Then he leaned in slightly and lowered his voice to something that was meant only for Hector's ears, his hand coming up to tap Hector once on the shoulder.

“But here is what neither of you know,” James said quietly, his smile never wavering.

“I was never serious about her. Not for a single day. My family needed her influence. We needed the Fashion Icon brand, we needed her connections, her reach — the Ross Corporation required that kind of visibility and Sarah was the most convenient vehicle to get it. That is the only reason I went anywhere near her.” He straightened up and brushed an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve.

“My actual standards are far, far higher than anything Sarah could ever dream of reaching.”

He glanced sideways at Hector with a cold smile.

“The moment that cheque hits my hands, I am throwing her away like yesterday's newspaper. And when I do — when I'm completely done with her you two can crawl back to each other and live happily ever after in whatever miserable little world you've built for yourselves. You have my blessing.”

He laughed quietly to himself, deeply satisfied, and stepped back.

Hector stood perfectly still through every single word of it.

He hadn't flinched. Hadn't blinked. Hadn't shifted his weight or changed his expression by even a fraction. He had simply stood there and listened with the patient, absolute stillness of someone who has all the time in the world because they already know exactly how this ends.

When James finally finished, Hector nodded his head slowly.

Just once.

“No problem,” Hector said calmly. “No problem at all.”

Then he lifted his eyes to the crowd and raised the microphone.

“Well,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the scene, cutting clean through the noise and the laughter and the charged atmosphere, “it seems all of you have already read my mind.”

He paused and let his gaze move slowly and deliberately across the sea of faces staring back at him.

“I am actually a representative of the Ross Corporation. And I was the one responsible for determining and presenting the winner of the twenty five million dollar lottery here tonight.”

For exactly half a second there was pure silence.

And then the crowd absolutely collapsed into hysteria.

“HE ACTUALLY SAID IT!”

“I KNEW IT! I CALLED IT!”

“You fell right into it!”

“He really stood there and said it with a straight face!”

The laughter was overwhelming, thunderous, completely uncontrollable, rolling through the football pitch like a tidal wave as people grabbed each other and pointed at Hector and shook their heads with the pure delighted disbelief of people who had just watched someone walk directly into the most predictable trap in the world.

“You fell for it!” someone screamed from the back of the crowd, and the entire pitch erupted all over again.