The Coldest Billionaire In The City Saw A Girl Slapped At A Gala, And His Reaction Left Everyone Speechless
Part 1
The garden gala was the last place I wanted to be on a Saturday evening.
Duty was the only reason I had forced myself into a tailored suit to attend the Marchman estate’s annual spectacle.
People in this city called me the coldest businessman in the entire financial district.
Years had been spent meticulously cultivating that exact reputation in every boardroom and social event.
Caring about others was an expensive liability, and that specific price had cost me dearly once before.
Watching the glittering machinery of high society from the shadows suited my purposes perfectly.
Waiters circulated with silver trays of champagne while a string quartet played something utterly forgettable in the background.
My position at the edge of the stone terrace provided a clear view of the entire sprawling lawn.
This was the perfect vantage point to observe the bright, cruel machinery of my so-called peers without being drawn into their games.
Laughter echoed across the manicured hedges, but none of it ever reached the eyes of the guests.
It was a predictable, tedious affliction of an evening that I intended to endure with as little conversation as physically possible.
That was when my eyes landed on her standing near the lower rose bushes.
She stood entirely apart from the glittering crowd, looking like a quiet shadow at the edge of a blindingly loud scene.
Her pale muslin dress was neat but unmistakably several years out of fashion.
A careful mend at the shoulder told a story of quiet dignity that the fluttering debutantes surrounding her entirely lacked.
Fingers tightly gripped a glass cup of lemonade she made absolutely no attempt to drink.
She was watching the party with the detached weariness of someone observing a fire from the cold side of a thick window.
There was a stillness to her grave, fine-boned face that immediately caught my attention.
The other socialites were practically vibrating with desperation for attention, but this young woman seemed to want nothing more than to disappear.
Then, an older, richly and expensively dressed woman swept down upon her with the speed of a striking snake.
Venom practically radiated from the older woman’s handsome but remarkably hard face.
She bore down on the quiet girl with the specific, predatory energy of a person who had finally found a safe target to be cruel to.
I couldn’t hear the exact words being exchanged over the sound of the nearby fountain.
The older woman’s face contorted with a viciousness she made absolutely no effort whatsoever to disguise.
The young woman went entirely pale, her frame going incredibly still under the verbal assault.
Suddenly, a hand raised high in the air, flashing with expensive diamond rings.
The slap cracked across the garden like a violently snapped tree branch.
Silence instantly killed every single conversation on the sweeping green lawn.
Two hundred people froze in their tracks, drinks halting halfway to their open mouths.
Not a single cry escaped the young woman’s lips despite the brutal impact.
She didn’t clutch her stinging face or attempt to flee into the safety of the hedges.
Refusing to give her tormentor the satisfaction of a public collapse, she slowly and deliberately straightened her spine.
She lifted her struck cheek and turned back to face the woman who had just assaulted her.
The silence she offered in return was infinitely more dignified than any tearful protest could have ever been.
The crowd of my wealthy peers did exactly what they always did in the face of genuine cruelty.
Nobody moved an inch to help the girl in the mended dress.
Drawing back a collective half step, their faces eagerly arranged into expressions of delicious, scandalized interest.
They intended to watch the entire spectacle unfold like it was a private theatrical performance put on for their amusement.
I realized with disgust that they fully intended to go home and gossip about this for the next fortnight.
It would be infinitely more comfortable for them to eventually conclude that the girl must have somehow deserved the blow.
Acknowledging that they had stood by and done nothing would require a spine that none of these people possessed.
My whole life had been spent perfecting the intricate art of not getting involved in the tragedies of strangers.
The title of the iron-hearted mogul had kept people at the exact distance I preferred for years.
But before my logical mind could even process the decision, my heavy leather shoes were already carrying me down the shallow stone steps.
The older woman’s hand was rising high into the air once again for a devastating second blow.
Emboldened by the crowd’s cowardly silence, she clearly prepared to strike with even more force.
Guests parted like rushing water as I rapidly closed the distance across the grass.
My large hand reached out and snatched her wrist directly out of mid-air, mere inches from the young woman’s bruised face.
I squeezed the older woman’s forearm with a crushing firmness that left absolutely no room for argument or escape.
The older woman violently turned her head to see exactly who had dared to interrupt her twisted moment of power.
Her face was still ugly with interrupted rage as she looked up.
Shock instantly replaced her anger when she recognized the dark, unyielding eyes of the one man in the city nobody dared to cross.
