Heir to an Indispensable Family

Chapter 22

At that moment Sarah mind was no longer in the scene

It had gone somewhere else entirely, racing backward through every moment, every decision, every turn she had taken over the past several months, replaying them all at a terrifying speed with brand new eyes.

The announcer was still walking toward her but she barely registered it anymore.

“How is Hector doing this?”

The question was ricocheting around inside her skull like a trapped bird. How? How was any of this possible? Was there something she had missed? Some piece of the puzzle that had been sitting directly in front of her face the entire time that she had been too blind, too arrogant, too busy looking in the wrong direction to see?

"Could it be true? Could what Hector announced actually be true?"

She thought about the lottery cancellation. She had laughed at it. The entire crowd had laughed at it. But the announcer hadn't laughed. The announcer had bowed. And not a polite, performative bow either. A ninety degree bow of absolute submission from a man who clearly knew exactly who and what he was bowing to.

"Could Hector actually be working for the Ross Corporation?"

The thought hit her like cold water thrown directly in her face.

And then the thoughts started coming faster. Unstoppable. Like a dam that had been holding back an ocean finally giving way all at once.

The Ross Corporation pulling out of her fashion icon deal. She had never understood why. It had happened so suddenly, so completely, with no real explanation given. One day the investment was secured and the next it was gone like smoke. She had blamed the everything. She had blamed her competitors. She had blamed everybody and everything except the one person who might have actually had the power to make that call.

"It was Hector."

The realization landed in her stomach like a stone.

"He pulled them out. He was the one that told them to withdraw."

And then the next thought arrived right behind it, somehow even worse than the first.

"Could he also have been the one that convinced them to invest in her in the first place?"

Everything suddenly rearranged itself inside her mind into a completely different picture than the one she had been looking at for months. The fashion icon app. The way it had been built so perfectly, so precisely, with such an intimate understanding of exactly what the market needed and exactly how to position it for maximum impact. It had blown up overnight. An enormous, talked about, industry shifting application that had made her name mean something.

Hector had built that.

She had let him. She had stood back and taken the credit and the spotlight and the attention while he had quietly, methodically constructed everything from the foundation upward.

And now she was standing here with a swollen cheeked James Wesley collapsed on the floor behind her and an announcer closing the distance between them with calm and terrible purpose, and the truth was assembling itself in front of her with a clarity that was almost physically painful.

Hector was not who she had thought he was.

Hector had never been who she thought he was.

She had been flip flopping from the very beginning when she could have when she should have positioned herself properly. She had thrown away something she hadn't even had the intelligence to recognize the value of.

The announcer was still coming.

Sarah's eyes snapped back to the present and found him less than ten feet away now, his expression carrying the patient certainty of someone who has never once been stopped by anything.

Her throat closed completely.

She had no words. She had no moves. She had nothing left in the arsenal that had served her so spectacularly badly all evening.

“Mr. Timothy.”

Hector's voice came from behind her, calm and clear and carrying the particular quality of someone who has never once in their life needed to raise their voice to be heard.

The announcer — Mr. Timothy — stopped immediately.

“There is no need for violence here.” Hector's tone was almost gentle. Almost.

“Let her be. Continue the event.” A brief pause.

“She isn't worthy enough to even be given the attention.”

Mr. Timothy straightened. Turned toward Hector. And lowered his head in that same perfect bow.

“No problem, sir.”

"Sir."

The word fell into the silence of the football pitch and detonated quietly.

"Sir."

One word. Four letters. But the way it landed, the way Mr. Timothy had said it, the weight and the direction and the absolute naturalness of it — it carried every answer to every question anyone in that crowd had been asking all evening.

The murmuring began immediately, spreading from person to person like a current moving through water.

“He actually works for them.”

“He works for the Ross Corporation.”

“He wasn't joking earlier. He was telling the truth.”

“He's actually with Ross Corporation. This whole time.”

“So when he said the lottery was cancelled — that was real?”

“Everything he said was real.”

The crowd was transforming in real time, the laughter and mockery from ten minutes ago curdling into something that looked very much like dread.

James Wesley heard every single word from his position on the floor.

He was still in considerable pain. His face had swollen dramatically on both sides, the skin darkened and tender, his cheeks puffed out like something that had been inflated too quickly and was threatening to split at the seams. He looked, in the most generous possible terms, like a red tomato that had been left out in the sun several days past its best.

But despite the pain, despite the humiliation, despite everything — his jaw still managed to drop.

“How,” James breathed, staring at Hector from the floor with eyes that had lost every trace of their earlier arrogance, “is that even possible?”

Nobody answered him, nobody needed to.

Because at that exact moment, Sarah's legs gave way beneath her completely.

She didn't stumble. She didn't catch herself on anything. She simply folded, slowly and entirely, until both her knees connected with the ground.