NovelPlus
Storytelling

She Humiliated a Quiet Woman in Front of Everyone, Never Realizing That the Woman She Had Insulted Was Hiding a Powerful Secret That Would Soon Expose Her Cruelty, Destroy Her Reputation, and Teach Everyone a Lesson They Would Never Forget

Chapter 5

Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Evelyn froze, her mouth agape in disbelief. "What? Louis, I didn't do anything! She was dressed like a beggar! She was touching the Himalaya crocodile bag! I was protecting your store!""You brainless, arrogant parasite!" Louis roared, his face flushing crimson as he advanced on her, veins bulging against his temples. "Do you have any idea who Victoria Vance is?! She controls forty billion dollars in sovereign investments! She was the only person on this planet willing to bail this company out of the grave my spending habits dug for it! All you had to do was stay away from the flagship for three hours! Three hours!""How was I supposed to know?!" Evelyn shrieked back, her pride clawing its way back to the surface through her tears. "She had no bodyguards! No jewelry! She looked like an assistant! You promised me that store was mine to manage! You told me I was going to be the face of Maison Lumière after the wedding!""There is no wedding!" Louis spat, ripping off his heavy signet ring and throwing it onto the floor at her feet. "Get out of my house! Get out of my life! My family is ruined, our shares are worthless, and it is entirely because of your bottomless, uneducated vanity!"Before Evelyn could utter another word, the oak elevator doors at the end of the private hallway chimed with a low, resonant chime.Stepping into the ruined penthouse was Arthur Mercier.At seventy-eight years old, the patriarch of the Mercier family walked with the aid of a polished ebony cane, but his back remained as straight as an iron girder. He wore a simple, impeccably kept charcoal wool suit that looked forty years old, and his silver hair was combed neatly back from a weathered, aristocratic brow. Behind him walked two somber men in dark suits—his personal attorneys.Arthur did not look at the shattered crystal, the spilt liquor, or the hysterical woman trembling in her ruined emerald gown. His eyes locked onto his grandson with an intensity that sucked all the air from the room."Grandfather..." Louis choked out, his arrogance crumbling instantly into the whimpering subservience of a frightened child. "Grandfather, I can explain... it was a misunderstanding with Vance Global... their terms were predatory..."Arthur raised his hand. The single gesture carried such moral gravity that Louis snapped his mouth shut immediately."For ten years, Louis, I sat in Provence and watched you dismantle everything my father built with his bare hands," Arthur said, his voice quiet, raspy, but cutting like a diamond saw. "You traded forty-year relationships with master tanners in Tuscany for sweatshops in Eastern Europe. You fired the master stitchers who gave this house its name so you could pay influencers ten thousand euros to attend dinner parties in Monaco. And you surrounded yourself with empty, vicious creatures who mistake Cruelty for Class."Arthur’s gaze flicked briefly toward Evelyn. It was not a look of hatred, but of profound, pitying disgust—the look an elder statesman might give to an infestation of termites that had hollowed out a historic cathedral."Arthur, please," Evelyn sobbed, dropping to her knees on the stained rug, her hands clasped. "I love Louis... I was only trying to maintain the prestige of the brand...""Prestige?" Arthur echoed, his lip twitching with bitter amusement. "Prestige is earned through a lifetime of honest labor, young woman. It is not something you spray on yourself like cheap perfume. My father spent eighteen hours a day in a cold cellar until his fingers were permanently bent from bone deformities, ensuring that every bag bearing our family name would outlast the person who bought it. You, Miss Dubois, possess neither pedigree, nor manners, nor character. You are merely an expensive mistake."Arthur turned back to his attorneys. "Notify the board. Louis Mercier is removed from the position of Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. The family trust will disinherit him from all ancestral properties. His luxury vehicles and corporate cards are cancelled as of five minutes ago. If he wishes to survive, he may find work with his hands."Without another word, Arthur turned on his heel and stepped back into the elevator, leaving the ruined heir and his fallen socialite fiancé to scream at each other among the ruins of their vanity.By midnight, the digital landscape of the global elite had performed its brutal, familiar ritual: the total purge of the fallen.
PREV NEXT

News in the same category

She Humiliated a Quiet Woman in Front of Everyone, Never Realizing That the Woman She Had Insulted Was Hiding a Powerful Secret That Would Soon Expose Her Cruelty, Destroy Her Reputation, and Teach Everyone a Lesson They Would Never Forget

7 Part