Chapter 3
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Under the massive crystal chandelier at the center of the ballroom, I stopped walking.
The melodious waltz swirled around us as all eyes turned our way.
I shifted uncomfortably in my crystal high heels. The stilettos were painfully thin, and my ankles were beginning to ache.
But that was just an excuse.
"I think there's something in my shoe," I frowned, displaying a perfectly calibrated expression of distress.
The air around us seemed to freeze.
The music played on, but conversations died. Countless gazes—surprised, curious, speculative—fell on my slender ankles.
I felt Carlos's gaze turn glacial beside me.
That wasn't a brother's look—it was an icy stare filled with warning.
Yes, I was deliberately provoking him.
I didn't back down. Meeting his gaze, I pushed this dangerous game toward its climax.
I had to do this.
Seven years of this sacrificial countdown had left me constantly suffocating.
Even though this power was laughably fake and pitifully brief.
"Brother?" I raised my face, my tone innocent yet willful, like a spoiled princess. "Won't you help me? My feet are killing me."
He fell silent.
Those two seconds stretched like an eternity.
People around us began to whisper, some with amused smiles, as if watching a show.
They probably thought even the most doting brother had his limits.
To make Carlos Van Drian, king of a business empire, kneel in public to adjust someone's shoes—surely that was fantasy.
Just as my heart threatened to burst from my chest, he smiled.
That smile—like spring ice melting, impossibly indulgent—could have made every woman in the room swoon.
"Of course," he said softly, as if I were just a naive child.
Then he released my arm, stepped back, and slowly knelt on one knee before hundreds of shocked onlookers.
He looked like a knight pledging fealty to his queen.
That noble head, hailed as "the most brilliant mind in finance," bowed to adjust high heels that weren't even uncomfortable.
His fingers were long and cold as they brushed my ankle.
That bone-chilling touch instantly shattered my illusion of power.
What surged through me wasn't triumph or satisfaction, but raw panic and fear.
I had gone too far.
