RUTHLESS MAGNATE'S SUPREMACY

Chapter 7

The heavy glass door of the dining room swung open to reveal the familiar warmth of home, though the atmosphere inside felt thick with unspoken tension. Nerissa stepped inside, her heels clicking softly against the floor, only to find her family already gathered around the elongated mahogany table. They were deep into their evening meal, the silver cutlery clinking against porcelain plates under the soft glow of the chandelier.

Her father sat at the head of the table, his posture rigid. To his right sat her mother, her expression pinched with lingering annoyance, while Niro picked listlessly at his food. Beside him sat Damian, whose presence always felt a little too permanent, like a fixture that had been bolted into the family dynamic without anyone asking for permission.

"Good of you to finally grace us with your presence, Nerissa," her father said, his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the room. "Where on earth have you been?"

Before she could even form a reply, Damian leaned forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the table with a sneer. "Don't tell me you were out meeting that pathetic ex-boyfriend of yours again."

Nerissa pulled out an empty chair and slid into it, the wood scraping slightly against the floor. She swallowed hard, locking her gaze onto Damian. There were moments when her cousin's invasive curiosity grated heavily against her nerves. He inserted himself into family matters as though he were an older brother, completely ignoring the boundary that he was merely a collateral relative.

Ignoring him for the moment, she shifted her attention to her brother. "How are you feeling, Niro? Did you end up with any injuries?"

Before Niro could answer, her Mommy interjected, her voice rising in pitch. "Nerissa, injury or no injury, your brother was physically assaulted by Jarren! We cannot simply sit back and let that arrogant monster get away with treating our family this way."

Without a word, Nerissa reached for a plate and began spooning food onto it, keeping her movements deliberate. She let her family stoke the embers of her resentment, feeding the narrative they were so eager to build. Truthfully, the chaos inside her mind was dizzying. Niro was her blood, and she could clearly see the faint, purplish bruise lingering near the corner of his lip. Yet, a cynical voice in the back of her mind whispered that Jarren would never have resorted to violence if he hadn't been provoked by Niro or the others sitting around this very table.

"I honestly never imagined that the breakup of the two of you would affect him to this extreme degree," Niro murmured, looking down at his plate with a theatrical sigh. Nerissa met his eyes. "You know how it was, Neri. Jarren and I were practically brothers. But it broke my heart to realize that he was willing to drag even us, your own family, into his downward spiral."

"Niro, stop sounding so pitiful!" her father snapped, his face darkening with genuine fury. "That Jarren Corpuz does not deserve to be remembered as someone who once held a special place in our lives." Mr. Joans took a slow, heavy breath, his chest rising and falling. "He even tracked me down, cornering me with demands and intense pressure to force you back into his arms, Neri, just so you wouldn't replace him with Jimmy."

Nerissa swallowed again. The arguments presented by her family carried weight.

"He screamed right in my face, Neri," her mother added, her eyes glistening with rehearsed tears. "When Niro and I went to the Corpuz Estate to check on him, hoping to offer some comfort and a friendly ear after everything that happened, do you know what he did? Instead of welcoming us into his office and offering us coffee like he used to do in the past, he pushed us away. He humiliated both of us without an ounce of shame."

"Mom is right, Nerissa," Niro chimed in, reinforcing the narrative. "So please, do not ever think that we are simply trying to poison your mind against Jarren. We are telling you the harsh truth because we refuse to keep secrets from you when your future is at stake."

Nerissa continued to eat, though her ears felt far more nourished by the grievances her family fed her than her stomach ever could. In that quiet fraction of a second, a cold realization settled deep within her bones. Jarren needed to pay for every single humiliation he had inflicted upon her family. That man deserved to be utterly destroyed, stripped of his pride, and left with nothing.

"Cousin, you cannot afford to let Jarren Corpuz make the first move," Damian said, leaning back and gazing at her with a mix of urgency and warning. "If we do not take the initiative right now, I guarantee you his retaliation will strike faster than lightning, and it will leave us with nowhere to run."

"Jarren will not be allowed to ruin us, Neri," Niro commanded, his eyes fixed on hers. "Damian is right. You have to strike first. You need to do something about this before it is too late."

Nerissa swept her gaze across the table, looking at each of them in turn. The faces of her family members stared back, expectant and demanding. "Do not worry," she said softly, her voice remarkably steady despite the storm raging inside her chest. "I will never allow his bitterness to destroy our family. You were right all along. Jimmy is the better choice, and I made the right decision when I chose him over Ja...Jarren."

Once the heavy silence of dinner finally dissipated, Nerissa excused herself and made her way upstairs to her bedroom on the second floor. She walked over to her bed and paused beside the wooden nightstand. Resting right there on the polished surface was a silver picture frame holding a photograph of her and Jarren, captured during happier times when they had taken a vacation on a luxury cruise ship.

A sharp pang of nostalgia twisted inside her chest. She had loved Jarren with every fiber of her being. But her father's words echoed relentlessly in her mind, reminding her that love alone could not sustain them, that she needed the immense social influence and financial security of Jimmy Terson. If Jimmy became her husband, her family would never have to worry about poverty or sliding backward into the desperate struggle of having nothing.

Slowly, she reached out and picked up the heavy frame, tracing the glass surface over Jarren's smiling face with her thumb.

"If only you had been wealthier than Jimmy, Jarren, I never would have walked away," she whispered into the empty room. A single, heavy tear slipped from her eye, splashing directly onto the glass over his image. "I refuse to let my family and me sink back into the abyss of poverty because I simply cannot bear to watch them suffer another day."

Her mind drifted back to the arrogant disrespect Jarren had so openly displayed toward her family over the past days, the bitter words and closed doors acting as fuel to her rapidly changing emotions.

"Besides, the time has come for me to extinguish whatever lingering affection I had left for you, because you turned out to be a cruel, unforgiving person," she continued, her voice hardening. "You hurt my family. You drew blood from Niro. You shouted at my mother!"

By the time she finished speaking, all traces of sorrow had vanished from Nerissa's eyes, replaced entirely by vindication.

"You will see, Jarren. You are going to regret everything."

With a sudden, violent motion, she slammed the picture frame back down onto the wooden desk, facing it downward with enough force that the glass cracked into a spiderweb pattern across the surface.

She stood up straight, walked over to her vanity, and picked up her phone. Without giving herself a chance to hesitate, she dialed a number she knew belonged to someone who possessed no moral compass, a person who felt no remorse whatsoever when weaving elaborate lies or ruining innocent lives for the right price.

The woman on the other end answered almost immediately, as if she had been waiting by her phone all evening. Despite a sudden knot of anxiety tightening in Nerissa's stomach—foreign as she was to the realm of deliberate malice—she drew in a slow, steadying breath.

"Yes, Miss Joans? What can I do for you?" the woman asked, her voice dripping with casual amusement from across the line.

"I need your help."

"Let me guess. Is this about your obsessive, unstable ex-boyfriend?"

"Yes," Nerissa replied, her voice dropping an octave. "It is entirely about him."

"Wonderful. So, have you finally given some serious thought to the option I suggested earlier... the one where we hire a professional to take care of him permanently? Where would you like him hit? Right between the eyes? In the chest, or somewhere a bit lower?"

Nerissa swallowed hard, tasting the bitter irony of the situation. She knew precisely who she had called, and she knew the depths of what this woman was capable of.

"I want to make him suffer, but not through physical violence," Nerissa said firmly.

"Oh? Then what kind of method do you have in mind, Miss Joans?"

"I want you to fabricate a high-quality video," Nerissa instructed, her tone cold and devoid of hesitation. "A realistic recording showing him physically assaulting me. I know your skills, and I know you can make it look completely undeniable. Name your price, and I will pay you whatever amount you demand."

A low chuckle drifted through the phone speaker. "Well, that sounds like a remarkably simple task, Miss Joans. You can rest easy knowing that I will handle it to absolute perfection."

"I need that video before the grand banquet at Miss Harolds mansion," Nerissa added, her eyes narrowing as she looked out her window toward the darkened horizon. "Make sure it looks thoroughly convincing. I want the entire world to despise him, to strip away every shred of his reputation, and to watch him lose everything he has built and nurtured for so many years."

"Consider it done," the woman replied smoothly, her laughter lingering in the air like a poisoned whisper before the line went dead.