Chapter 7 - Unmasked in High Society
"Sadi!" Trevor shouted, his voice cracking violently across the suddenly hushed ballroom.
Several security guards immediately turned, their hands moving to their jackets, but Roman raised a single finger, silently ordering them to stand down. Roman’s face was an unreadable mask of cold amusement.
Sadi stopped at the bottom step. She looked at Trevor.
He looked pathetic. His tie was slightly crooked, his eyes wild with sleep-deprived mania, his skin slick with nervous sweat. He stood in the center of the polished dance floor, surrounded by high-society figures who were watching him as if he were a rabid stray dog that had slipped through the service doors.
"You think you’re clever, don't you?" Trevor sneered, pointing an accusing, trembling finger at her. "You put on an expensive dress! You rented some jewelry! You found some dangerous gangster to play your sugar daddy so you could show up here and mock me?!"
A sharp gasp echoed through the room. Calling Roman Moretti a "gangster" to his face was a death sentence.
Raymond Hayes, Trevor’s former boss, pushed through the crowd, his face pale as chalk. "Trevor, shut your mouth and get out of here right now!"
"Shut up, Raymond!" Trevor screamed, completely untethered from reality. "I’m not playing your games anymore! Sadi, look at me! Tell these people who you really are! Tell them you were an evicted waitress! Tell them you didn't have fifty bucks to your name until you started selling yourself to the highest bidder!"
The room dropped into absolute zero.
Whispers ceased. Breathing stopped. People literally backed away from Trevor, creating a ten-foot void around him as if the floor beneath his feet was about to open up to hell.
Sadi didn't blink. She didn't flinch.
Instead of hiding behind Roman, Sadi took two slow, measured steps down from the staircase. The emerald silk swished like water around her ankles. She stopped three feet away from Trevor, meeting his deranged gaze with eyes that were as cold and still as an Arctic sea.
"Are you done, Trevor?" she asked. Her voice was quiet, but in the dead silence of the ballroom, every single word carried with razor-sharp clarity.
"I’m just getting started!" Trevor yelled, trying to regain his footing. "You think you can ruin my career? You think you can have Hayes fire me? You’re a parasite! You leech off men who actually work for a living!"
"You kicked me yesterday," Sadi stated plainly.
The crowd stirred. Murmurs rippled through the room.
"You kicked a woman on the floor of a boutique because you thought she had no voice," Sadi continued, her tone steady, devoid of all pity. "Three years ago, you emptied my checking account in the middle of the night and left me to sleep on a concrete bench in the winter. You told me I was nobody. You told me I would always crawl in the dirt."
She took one more step closer. Trevor instinctively flinched backward.
"I didn't destroy your career, Trevor," Sadi whispered, loud enough for every board member, senator, and CEO in the room to hear. "Your arrogance did. You believed that cruelty was power. You believed that treating vulnerable people like garbage was the mark of a successful man."
"You... you lied about who you were!" Trevor stammered, suddenly feeling the weight of four hundred pairs of hateful eyes bearing down on him.
Roman stepped forward, coming to stand directly beside Sadi. He placed a heavy, protective arm around her waist, pulling her flush against his side. He didn't look at Trevor; he looked at Raymond Hayes.
"Raymond," Roman said softly.
The senior partner practically sprinted forward, trembling. "Yes, Mr. Moretti. I am so deeply, unimaginably sorry—"
"Is this the caliber of men you hire to represent your clients?" Roman asked, his tone dripping with lethal boredom. "Thieves? Abusers who strike women in department stores?"
"He has already been terminated, sir," Hayes said frantically, sweat dripping from his chin. "And tonight, I will personally submit a dossier to the State Bar Association regarding his falsification of billable hours and unauthorized embezzlement of client retainer funds over the past fourteen months."
Trevor’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. "What?! You can't prove that!"
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"We already did, Trevor," Hayes hissed, glaring at him with pure hatred. "The forensic accountants sent by the Moretti Syndicate finished their audit two hours ago. You’re not just fired. You’re going to federal prison."
***
