Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips Off
The dining room around Table Four had gone completely still.
Nearby patrons, mostly high-profile regulars and city council officials, were watching the scene with rapt curiosity.
Marco, my head sommelier, hovered near the service bar with two burly floor captains, waiting for my signal.
"Maya... you... you own Bistro Lumière?" Lauren stammered, clutching her designer leather binder against her stomach like a shield.
"I own the Lumière Group, Lauren," I said quietly, tossing the damp napkin onto the table.
"Four fine-dining locations in Chicago, two in Milwaukee, and a boutique hotel currently breaking ground in Evanston."
Lauren looked between me and Ethan, frantically searching for an exit from the nightmare she had created with a tipped glass.
"Maya, listen to me," Lauren gasped, stepping closer with her hands raised in desperate surrender.
"It was an accident! I swear to God, my elbow slipped when I tried to take that selfie! You know me, I’m always so clumsy!"
"Clumsy?" I repeated, looking her dead in the eye.
"In tenth grade, you dumped a carton of chocolate milk into my open locker and called it an accident. In eleventh grade, you tripped me in the gymnasium during assembly and told the principal I lost my balance."
Lauren's face flushed from pale white to a burning, mottled red.
"That was seventeen years ago!" Lauren hissed, her defensive arrogance flaring back up through her panic.
"We were kids! Are you really going to hold high school grudges when we're grown adults discussing a fifty-million-dollar investment fund?!"
Ethan stepped directly into her line of sight, towering over her with crushing authority.
"High school didn't make you cruel, Miss Pierce," Ethan said, his voice carrying clearly to every surrounding table.
"High school just gave you practice. And I don't invest fifty million dollars with people who treat service staff like garbage, let alone the woman who built this empire from scratch."
"Mr. Bennett, please!" Lauren pleaded, tears of genuine panic finally pooling in her mascara.
May you like
"My managing partner sent me here personally! If I lose this account, I won't just miss my promotion... they'll fire me!"
"Then you should have thought about your career before you decided to use a glass of wine to prove you were superior," Ethan answered coldly.
