Chapter 205
Chapter 205:
He didn’t nod back. He didn’t smile.
He turned his back on her.
It was a deliberate, physical rejection. A wall of black tuxedo wool presented to her face. He leaned in to the mogul, laughing louder than before, effectively erasing her existence.
The sting was sharp and hot. It hit her in the chest, a breathless moment of humiliation. The people around them noticed. The mogul looked awkward, glancing at Aurora and then away.
Outsider. The label hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Aurora’s grip on her glass tightened. She didn’t retreat. She stood there for a beat longer than necessary, forcing Sebastian to feel the weight of his rudeness, before she calmly turned and walked toward the terrace.
Across the room, Vivian Kensington watched over the rim of her glass. She smiled. It was a small, cruel thing. She leaned toward the woman next to her.
“It is so sad,” Vivian whispered, loud enough to be heard by three other people. “She just doesn’t understand our world. She thinks she can just walk up to Sebastian after what she did.”
“What did she do?” the woman asked, eager for the dirt.
“She tried to sell stories about our family to the tabloids,” Vivian lied smoothly. “For drug money. It’s a hard habit to break, I suppose.”
The lie spread like a virus. By the time Aurora reached the terrace doors, half the room was looking at her with a mix of disgust and morbid curiosity.
Aurora stepped out into the cold night air. The snow was falling harder now, dusting the stone patio in white. It was quiet out here. Clean.
She checked her phone. No reply from Elias.
A pang of disappointment hit her, sharper than the cold wind. She pushed it down. She was Aurora Vance. She didn’t need a knight. She needed a strategy.
The terrace door opened. A waiter came out, carrying a tray of red wine. He moved with a strange, jerky purpose.
Aurora’s instincts, honed in back alleys and boardrooms, screamed a warning.
She saw his eyes flick to the left, where Vivian was watching through the glass. A signal.
The waiter stumbled. It was a bad performance, theatrical and clumsy. The tray tipped. Five glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon launched toward Aurora’s dress.
Aurora didn’t gasp. She didn’t freeze.
She moved.
She sidestepped with a fluid, dancer-like grace, her body shifting out of the trajectory just as the red liquid splashed violently onto the stone where she had been standing a second ago.
The wine pooled like blood on the snow.
The waiter looked horrified, not because he had spilled, but because he had missed.
The door burst open. Vivian rushed out, a napkin in her hand, her face arranged in a mask of fake concern.
“Oh my god! Aurora!” Vivian shrieked. “Are you clumsy? Look at this mess!”
She lunged at Aurora, trying to dab at a dress that was perfectly dry. It was a power move—to touch, to invade space, to treat her like a child who had soiled herself.