Chapter 92: Painful Realization

"Finally decided to apologize? Too late. I won’t accept."

Stan said nothing. He pulled out the chair directly across from her, the chair she had reserved for the major shareholder, and sat down.

Vivian’s eyes widened.

"What do you think you’re doing?"

She half-rose from her seat, alarm crashing through the contempt like a wave through a sandcastle.

"That seat is reserved. I’m meeting someone, someone important, and if they walk in and see you sitting there"

"You need to leave," she hissed, reaching across the table and grabbing his wrist. "Right now. Get up. You’re going to ruin everything."

Stan didn’t move.

"I have an appointment," Vivian continued, her voice climbing with desperate urgency. "I’m waiting for the major shareholder of Star Entertainment Company. Do you understand? A major shareholder. Not some, not you. Get up!"

Stan looked at her with an expression of mild, patient curiosity.

"Didn’t you invite me here?"

"I didn’t invite you. I invited"

Vivian stopped.

Something cold moved through her chest.

She replayed his words. He’d said invite. Specifically. As if he’d received a specific invitation for a specific meeting at this specific time and place.

Her eyes searched his face. Her breathing changed.

"No. It can’t be. There’s no possible way"

Without breaking eye contact, Vivian reached slowly into her bag, pulled out her phone, and dialed the number she’d called last night. The number belonging to the major shareholder of Star Entertainment Company.

The phone rang once.

On the table between them, Stan Harrison’s phone lit up and began to vibrate.

The ringtone filled the restaurant’s quiet air like a small, elegant bomb.

Vivian stared at the buzzing phone. Then at Stan. Then back at the phone. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

Her brain was performing the kind of emergency recalculation that normally requires a reboot, cross-referencing every interaction, every insult, every thrown bill and stolen umbrella and public humiliation, against the single, devastating fact now staring her in the face.

’Stan Harrison is the major shareholder?!’

’Stan Harrison, the man I splashed with my car, called a nobody, demanded to kneel, tried to expel, and planned to pour soup on, is my boss?!’

The blood left her face in a single, visible wave, as if someone had pulled a drain plug somewhere beneath her collarbone.

"You’re" Her voice came out as a whisper. "You’re the"

"The major shareholder." Stan picked up his still-ringing phone, glanced at the screen, Vivian Reeves, and declined the call with a single tap. "Yes."

Vivian’s legs gave out slightly. She caught herself on the edge of the table, steadied her weight, and remained standing, not out of respect, though the posture certainly looked like it, but because her body had temporarily forgotten how to sit down.

"What happened between us before," she said, the words tumbling out fast, her professional composure reassembling itself through sheer force of will, "that was, it was a misunderstanding. A terrible misunderstanding. I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry."

Her hands were shaking. Her voice was shaking. Everything about her was shaking except her eyes, which were locked onto Stan’s face with the wide, unblinking intensity of a woman who had just realized she was standing on the edge of a cliff she’d built herself.

Stan leaned back in his chair and studied her.

The transformation was remarkable. Forty-eight hours ago, this woman had been standing in a playground surrounded by bodyguards, demanding he kneel in front of two hundred people. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d been planning to pour soup on his head. Twelve hours ago, she’d threatened to have him expelled.

Now she was standing beside his chair, hands clasped, head bowed, afraid to sit down without permission.

"What did you want to discuss?" Stan asked.

Vivian swallowed hard.

"I, I wanted to ask for your support." Her voice was small now, stripped of every trace of the imperious confidence she usually wore like armor. "My position at the company is being challenged. Several senior staff members want me removed. If I had the backing of a major shareholder, they wouldn’t be able to"

"You want me to help you keep your job," Stan said flatly.

"Yes." The word came out barely above a whisper.

Stan was quiet for a moment. He let the silence stretch, long enough for Vivian to feel every second of it, long enough for the full weight of irony to settle over the table like a tablecloth.

"I’m in a bad mood," he said eventually. "You’ve given me an extraordinary amount of trouble over the past few days. You ransacked my dormitory. You humiliated my roommate. You demanded I kneel in public. You tried to have me expelled from university. It’s a stupid childish behaviour, so I think you need to touch grass for a while."

He listed each item with the measured calm of a man reading receipts.

"Under the circumstances, I don’t think I’m inclined to do you any favors. And instead of helping you, I think I should probably think very carefully about whether you’re the right person to be managing my company’s branch office at all."

The word my landed like a hammer on glass.

Stan stood up, straightened his jacket, and looked down at her.

"We’re done here."

He walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

Vivian Reeves stood motionless beside the empty chair for a very long time.

The wine was untouched. The food was getting cold. The carefully rehearsed pitch she’d spent all morning preparing was dissolving in her memory like sugar in hot water.

’He’s going to fire me.’

The thought arrived with nauseating clarity.

’He’s going to fire me!’ she was terrified, what would her family think of her if she can’t hold a position they painstakingly got with their connections.

Her hands were still shaking. She pressed them flat against the table and forced herself to think.

’The expulsion.’ Her stomach lurched. She pulled out her phone and dialed the principal’s office with numb fingers.