Chapter 4 - The House of CardsThe chaos in the ballroom was absolute. Guests who had spent the last hour fawning over Mason Reed were now frantically trying to distance themselves from him. His partners were huddled in a corner, already discussing how to fire him to save their own skin.
I stood on the stage, the center of gravity of the entire room.
"Mason," I called out, my voice cutting through the noise. He looked up, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and impotent rage. "You wanted a partner who belonged beside Vanessa. Someone who could give her the life she thought she deserved. Tell me, how does it feel to know that every penny she’s been bragging about, every account she’s been managing, was built on top of my infrastructure?"
Mason turned and ran. He didn't even stop to look at Vanessa. He bolted for the exit, his ego and his career left in the dust of the ballroom floor.
Vanessa stood alone. The three hundred guests, the "movers and shakers" of the Houston oil scene, were now ignoring her entirely, treating her like a contagion. She looked at me, her pride finally completely eroded by the crushing reality of what she had thrown away.
"Ethan, please," she begged, stepping toward me. "It was never about the money. I just wanted... I wanted to feel like we were moving forward. I felt like we were stuck!"
"We were never stuck, Vanessa," I said, stepping down from the stage. I walked past her, not even glancing at the wedding ring she had thrown on the floor. It was just a piece of metal, a symbol of a contract that had been voided by greed. "You were just bored. And you mistook my privacy for weakness."
I walked toward the exit, my assistant—a woman who had worked with me for fifteen years and was the only person in the world who knew my schedule—waiting by the door.
"The helicopter is waiting, sir," she said, her voice professional and untouched by the drama.
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"Wait," a voice called out. It was the bank chairman, the man who had financed Mason’s empire. He was sweating, his expensive suit rumpled. "Mr. Cole... Ethan. Surely we can discuss this. The market... if you pull your assets, you’ll trigger a regional collapse."
I stopped at the door and looked back at him. "I didn't start this, and I’m certainly not going to end it to save your dividends. You spent years ignoring the crumbs, and now you’re going to learn what happens when those crumbs decide to stand up."
