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Chapter 581
Chapter 581:
“Dr. Zhang.” Brogan dropped the name with the gravity it deserved. “Nobel Laureate in Physiology. Current Chief Medical Advisor to the White House. I presented your Gen-2 breakthrough data to him last week — the molecular resistance mechanisms, the blood-brain barrier solution — and he was completely blown away. He’s specifically requesting to meet you tonight to discuss a potential joint initiative between the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and your lab p>
The glass of water stopped halfway to June’s lips.
Dr. Zhang was a living legend — the undisputed titan of her field and the mentor she had revered most during her early years in academia. A connection at this level could lift her entirely out of the toxic, capital-driven warfare she had been trapped in and place her exactly where she had always belonged.
“I’m in,” she said, her voice sharpening immediately. “Time and location p>
𝖣о𝗐n𝗹𝗼a𝘥 𝗣𝘋𝘍𝗌 𝗳𝘳𝘦e 𝗼𝘯
“Eight o’clock. Le Bernardin — it’s the only place he’ll agree to on short notice. I’ve already sent a car p>
June ended the call and caught her own reflection in the dark kitchen window. The hollow, exhausted look that had taken up residence in her eyes over the past weeks was gone. In its place burned something focused and brilliant and entirely her own.
Across town on Fifth Avenue, inside an expensive styling salon, Susan reclined in a plush massage chair while a technician applied a caviar facial mask to her skin.
“Oh, this is the life,” Susan announced at full volume, oblivious to the salon’s quiet atmosphere. “This is how real high society lives p>
Alycia sat beside her, holding her black Amex card, her face pale and tight beneath its composed surface.
The lie she had told in the limousine required a victory to support it. After Cole’s terrifying call, she could no longer lean on his name. She had spent the past hour working her socialite contacts in a quiet frenzy, and one of them had tipped her off that Brogan Clements had just secured a last-minute booking at Le Bernardin for a major scientific figure. Alycia had understood immediately. The desire to enter the same room as June — to assert herself, to exist in her rival’s orbit and prove she belonged there — overrode every shred of rational judgment. She had spent a small fortune bribing a concierge service to acquire an overflow table near the kitchen doors. A terrible table. A humiliating foothold. But the same arena.
“Mom, I got the reservation,” Alycia said smoothly, manufacturing a bright smile. “It’s the hardest table in New York to secure, but I made it happen p>
Susan laughed — loud and grating, entirely without self-awareness. “I knew it! I’m wearing the limited-edition sequin gown. I want every snobby old-money woman in that room to choke on her dinner when she sees me walk in p>
Alycia looked at her mother’s face — the greed, the vulgarity, the complete absence of any genuine sophistication — and felt a wave of sharp, physical revulsion that she swallowed back down without expression.
At 7:30 PM, June stepped out of her building in a perfectly tailored black silk slip dress and slid into the back of Brogan’s waiting town car.
At that exact same moment, Alycia and her parents — dressed in a collision of loud, logo-heavy designer pieces — climbed into an Uber Black on the opposite side of the city.