2025-09-22 21:23:33
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Chapter 814
The bread rolls sat on the side table, neat and untouched.Now the men had Serena by both arms, and the great doors were getting closer.Then somebody stepped into their path, holding a silver tray with nothing on it."Excuse me," Alex said. "That's my wife."The men stopped, mostly from surprise. Connor turned round with the loan folders under his arm."What is this?" he said. "Another hero?""No. A husband."Connor laughed. His men laughed with him, and then five hundred guests laughed from their chairs, because laughing was safer.Connor walked up close and blew cigar smoke into the idiot's face."You've got some nerve, talking to me like that. Do you know who I am? My father is Victor Russell."Alex blinked through the smoke. "My father is the Emperor."He said it the way he said everything, mildly, like a man telling you the time.The laughing stopped.For a moment the whole ballroom remembered at once what nobody ever said aloud. The idiot by the kennels was the Tenth Prince. Hi
Chapter 813
It never landed. Preston Tiffany shoved him back so hard he hit the next table and sent the glasses ringing."Hey! Hey! Who do you think you are? This is a Tiffany party!" "You want a fight? Pick on somebody your own size.""Stay out of this, fat boy, or you'll be sorry.""Ha! Sorry? Come on, then. Show me what you've got!"The man swung. Preston ducked it, clumsy but lucky, and drove a fist into his nose. The man staggered back. Blood ran down over his lip and onto his white collar.For one second, the ballroom was quiet.Then the coast began to clap.Preston turned round slowly with his fists up, and took it all in. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him."You picked the wrong Tiffany, mister."The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked at the blood on it."Do you know who I am?""I don't care who you are! Get out, while you can still walk!"The man smiled with red teeth."You've got guts, fat boy. I'll give you that." He put his dark glasses back on. "
Chapter 812
Patricia laughed again, and this time it went all the way round the ballroom."Kneel? To you?" She stood up from the front row, one cheek still red from the rain. "I made that perfume. Everybody on this coast knows it. I'm not kneeling to anybody.""You didn't make it," Serena said. "You stole it. From my mother's notebook. So kneel.""I won't.""Then don't."Serena picked up the folders from the podium. All of them. She held them up so the whole room could see."These are the House of Tiffany's loans. Every one. They're mine now. Tomorrow I sell them. To anyone on this coast who wants to watch the Tiffanys go under. And I think there will be a long line."The room went dead still.Pauline was on her feet. "You wouldn't dare.""Wouldn't I?" Serena looked down at the front row. At her aunt. At her cousin. At the Baroness beside the podium. "I know exactly what happened, Aunt Pauline. Patricia didn't do it alone. The whole house knew. My mother's notebooks went missing, and nobody looke
Chapter 811
Nobody in the ballroom breathed.Natasha picked up the folders, both of them, and held them against her chest like a schoolbook."The House of Tiffany punished Miss Serena Tiffany tonight," she said. "Before the whole coast. It told us it will not have her. It told us Patricia is its head."She looked down at the Baroness on the step."So this meeting is over. Halcyon will never work with the House of Tiffany again. Not this year. Not ever." A small, cold pause. "I am sorry. But Halcyon does not get played."The Baroness's mouth opened. Nothing came out.Natasha lifted the folders a little higher, so the back of the room could see them."Tomorrow, I will sell these loans. To anyone on this coast who wants the Tiffanys and the Pryces finished." Her eyes went slowly round the tables. "I think I'll have a long line."Nobody laughed. Half the room looked down at their plates, because half the room had wanted exactly that for years."By tomorrow night," Natasha said, "I want to see them lo
Chapter 810
Patricia took the microphone as if it had always been hers, and smiled out over the room, sweet as sugar on a knife."Thank you, Grandmother. Thank you, Ms. Vale. The House of Tiffany has made perfume on this coast for three hundred years, and I promise you, Halcyon will never regret it. And my poor cousin will make anything Halcyon asks for. Anything at all. She works for me now."She laughed lightly. "So you see, Ms. Vale, you get both of us. In one pocket."The room clapped. Not everyone.Enough.Serena sat still for three breaths. Alex heard her count them.Then she stood up and walked out between the tables, chin up, hands flat at her sides, past every face that had just heard her called a liar.Nobody stopped her. At the great doors her shoulders shook once. Then she was gone.Her napkin was still folded. She had not even touched her water.Inside the mild, empty smile, something very old woke up.A hand fell on his shoulder."Hear that, dog boy?" Julian bent down beside him, sm
Chapter 809
Two nights later the Grand's ballroom was white and gold, a hundred candles, the sea black behind the tall windows. In the middle of the floor a ship carved out of ice, Halcyon's mark, dripped slowly into a silver tray.At the Tiffany table Serena sat very straight in her best dress, her hands folded in her lap. Her name, on the contract.Patricia under it. She had said it to herself all day, the way you count steps in the dark.Alex sat beside her with three coats folded over his knees, because nobody else had wanted to hold them.The doors opened, and the room turned.Rebecca Morgan came in alone, tall and cold, dark red hair pinned back hard, a man's watch on her thin wrist. Whispers ran ahead of her across the floor. The Cruel Lady of Calder never came to anyone's party.At the high table she and Natasha Vale inclined their heads to each other. Neither said a word. Whatever the Morgans owed Halcyon, nobody in this room would hear of it.She turned to go back to the Morgan table. H
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Reader Comments
Good works so far
exactly ... am tired of waiting everyday
a chapter a day will keep your readers away