He saw Scarlett.
Then he stopped.
The color disappeared from his face so quickly that one of the directors behind him nearly walked into his shoulder.
Scarlett remained seated, cream still streaked across one side of her face.
Christian stared at her ruined dress.
Then at the shattered plate.
Then at Meredith.
For the first time that night, Meredith’s confidence flickered.
“Christian?”
He walked past her.
Not slowly.
Not ceremonially.
He crossed the ballroom with the unsteady urgency of a man who had just discovered that the floor beneath his entire life was cracking.
He stopped in front of Scarlett’s table.
For three terrible seconds, no one spoke.
Then Christian Vance, chief executive of a multinational conglomerate worth billions, lowered his head into a deep bow.
Gasps moved across the ballroom.
Meredith’s mouth opened.
Christian’s voice trembled. “Welcome, Chairman Scarlett. Please forgive what has happened in my house.”
The silence afterward felt physical.
One of the board directors stood straighter.
Another immediately removed his glasses and wiped them despite the lenses being perfectly clean.
Scarlett slowly lifted the linen napkin and wiped cream from her jaw.
Meredith looked from Christian to Scarlett as though the room had changed languages without warning.
“Chairman?” she whispered.
Christian raised his head only slightly.
His eyes were filled with something Meredith had never seen in him before.
Fear.
She forced out a laugh. “Christian, stop this. She’s obviously pretending to be someone important.”
Christian turned.
The expression on his face ended her laughter.
“Do you know what you’ve done?”
Meredith blinked. “I protected your event.”
“You humiliated the controlling chairman of the group that owns our debt.”
The words landed unevenly because Meredith’s mind refused to assemble them.
Christian took one step toward her.
“Her company owns the land under this building.”
