Chapter 7: The Bribe at the Gala
The seventeenth of June arrived hot, thick, and suffocating. The marble ballroom of the Peton Mansion was flooded with three hundred guests dripping in diamonds and aggressive generational wealth.
Silas was only there because the temporary lighting rig was acting up, and as the foreman, he had to manage the complex dimmer panels near the service corridor.
Hadley saw him from all the way across the crowded room. She was wearing the silver gown her mother had demanded, and the heavy, shimmering fabric made her feel like a prize on a pedestal.
She abandoned a conversation with a city councilman and walked straight toward the service corridor. She stopped exactly one foot away from Silas.
“Thank you for the water,” Hadley said quietly, her eyes scanning his ill-fitting, borrowed black suit.
“Of course,” Silas murmured, pretending to adjust a dial on the massive electrical board.
“She’s announcing it tonight,” Hadley confessed, her voice cracking. “The engagement to Wittman.”
“I know,” Silas replied softly, his jaw tight.
They stood there for a fragile, dangerous moment, trapped in the gravity of each other’s presence. Across the expansive room, Eleanor watched them with the lethal patience of a sniper.
Wittman Ashcroft IV confidently approached Hadley from the open bar, sporting the arrogant smile of a man who had just bought a prize horse.
Hadley instinctively took one panicked half-step backward away from Wittman, toward Silas.
The entire room saw the half-step. The elite gossips whispered. Eleanor slammed her champagne glass onto a silver tray.
Eleanor marched furiously toward the service corridor. “Hadley, go entertain the Ashcrofts. Now.”
Hadley hesitated, looking at Silas, before finally walking away with her head bowed, the silver gown trailing behind her.
Eleanor rounded on Silas, backing him into the alcove by the window. She reached into her clutch and pulled out a crisp, pre-written cashier’s check.
“Twice your annual income, Mr. Renwick,” Eleanor hissed, shoving the paper toward his chest.
Silas looked down at the staggering number. He didn’t flinch.
“You will finish the Beaumont through a proxy,” Eleanor dictated, her voice dripping with venom. “You will pack your cheap bags, take your child, and leave Charleston tomorrow morning.”
Silas slowly looked up from the check, meeting the matriarch’s furious glare.
He did not raise his voice. He did not stiffen in defense. He leaned in, his voice dangerously calm.
“No, ma’am.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened in genuine shock. She had expected a screaming match. She had expected him to negotiate for more money. She could manage a greedy man.
The absolute, chilling calm in his voice terrified her.
Furious, Eleanor grabbed her champagne glass, stormed to the center of the massive ballroom, and violently tapped her spoon against the crystal. The string quartet stopped dead. The crowd fell silent.
“Before I welcome our extraordinary guests,” Eleanor announced loudly, turning her wrath back toward the corridor where Silas stood. “I must address something that has distressed me.”
And then the humiliation began.
She called him a tradesman. She mocked his clothes. She told three hundred of the most powerful people in the state that he was too poor to court her daughter.
Hadley was frozen in horror, tears spilling over her eyelashes.
Silas did not move. He let her hurl every insult, every condescending slur she had in her arsenal.
His hand casually slid into his cheap jacket pocket, his fingers brushing against the heavy, unopened envelope from Foster Lynwood. The envelope contained the legally binding documents proving Silas owned 47.3% of the Peton Hospitality Group.
Eleanor smiled triumphantly at the crowd, basking in the cruel laughter of her peers.
She was about to find out exactly what happens when you try to evict the landlord.
