Chapter 455
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Chapter 455:
The Meatpacking District was slick with freezing rain.
Jocelyn sat on a plush velvet sofa in the dimly lit lobby of the Soho House private club, wearing a tailored black trench coat, her posture perfectly straight. She was there for the initial legal review of the Series B contracts. Isabelle Sterling was now forty-five minutes late — a pathetic, transparent power play.
Jocelyn didn’t care. She had Victor’s written approval in her briefcase. She opened her iPad and began working through her emails, completely unbothered.
Then the cloying blend of salon perfume and medical sanitizer invaded her personal space.
𝖲𝗵𝘢𝗿𝘦 у𝗼𝘶𝘳 𝘵h𝘰𝗎𝘨ht𝘀 o𝘯
“Mrs. Collins. What a tragic coincidence p>
Jocelyn looked up slowly from her screen.
Dr. Chloe Monroe stood over her in a white Chanel tweed suit, holding a glass of sparkling water, her face arranged into a mask of false, pitying sympathy. Jocelyn’s eyes went flat. She recognized the woman from the photograph immediately.
“Dr. Monroe,” Jocelyn said, her voice even. “Since you are no longer employed by my husband, I can’t imagine we have anything to discuss p>
Chloe let out a small, condescending laugh and settled onto the sofa directly across from her, crossing her legs deliberately. “Isabelle told me you were here begging for financing,” she said, keeping her voice low and dripping with elitist venom. “It’s really quite sad. You’re working yourself to the bone for fifty million dollars.” She leaned forward, eyes flashing with malice. “I imagine the interest on one of Gaston’s smaller accounts exceeds your company’s entire valuation. But I suppose men like Gaston don’t let the help access the real family jewels. It makes sense — why would he give real power to a PR wife p>
The words landed squarely in Jocelyn’s chest.
They weren’t true. Gaston had literally tried to give her the money just the night before. But Chloe had aimed with precision at Jocelyn’s deepest, most private insecurity: the fear that the world still saw her as a parasite — a charity case kept afloat by a billionaire’s goodwill. A hot wave of shame and fury burned through her stomach.
But Jocelyn did not break. She did not show weakness.
She slowly closed her iPad. The magnetic clasp clicked sharply in the quiet lobby. She raised her eyes to Chloe’s, her gaze as cold and precise as shattered glass.
“Dr. Monroe,” Jocelyn said, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm whisper. “You are obsessed with my marriage because you are drowning in rejection. You could strip naked and lie across Gaston’s examination table, and he still wouldn’t register your existence as a woman. You are nothing to him but a fired employee p>
Chloe’s face turned stark white.
The brutal, irrefutable truth of the words stripped away every layer of her arrogant armor. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She stood so abruptly she knocked her knee against the coffee table, sending her water spilling across the surface. She turned and walked out of the lobby at a near-run, completely humiliated.