24 CHAPTER 24
One of the men slammed his hand hard against the table, the loud bang echoing across the walls, startling even James. 1
His mind rejected the thought immediately, tossing it aside as impossible-laughable even. “Cora?” he thought again. “No. It’s not her. She doesn’t have that kind of power.”
He didn’t want to believe it, he couldn’t believe it.
The blacklist
Cora.
Someone else leaned forward, voice quieter but more dangerous. “You crossed someone. Someone important. Someone the Victor respects enough to burn all of us just to send a message. And now you’re standing there, washing your hands like Pilate?”
Another stood up so quickly his chair screeched and nearly toppled over. Their faces twisted with fury, their brows furrowed, and veins bulging on their necks. Every single
one of them was boiling in rage.
But then again…He remembered the ceremony. The way she walked in-different. Confident. Powerful. Like a queen returning to her throne. The way the guards treated her. The way William slapped him without hesitation, like a man following orders from someone far more important.
“Next time, before you speak, remember who you’re speaking about.”
“You are going to open your mouth,” the man who first slammed the table said, his voice sharp, “and you are going to tell us what you did. Tell us who you offended. Tell us now.”
But deep down, a cold shiver ran through his spine.
“You expect us to believe this?” another added sharply, stepping closer to where James sat. “We all read the reports. We saw the videos. You didn’t just get removed-you were embarrassed. And you think that kind of reaction comes without a reason?”
“And now…”
At that moment he lowered his gaze for a moment, pressing his lips together, his heart racing. Then he slowly looked back up.
The men in the room continued watching him. Some had their arms crossed. Others had their jaws clenched. But none of them spoke. They were waiting.
Still, he stayed silent, the group wasn’t going to wait.
His eyes shifted restlessly from one furious face to another, their expressions growing darker with every second he stayed silent. His palms were sweating. His legs were itching to run. But he was stuck-trapped in the middle of a storm that had no clear direction.
But what if she could?
And then there was that painful sentence from William:
James slowly stood up, the weight of their glares nearly crushing him. “I swear… -”
“You keep quiet and we swear, James,” the man said, his tone now as cold as ice, “we will do everything humanly possible to drag the truth out of you. We’re not going to let you ruin us just because you’re too proud or too scared to talk.”
“Oh, now you’re quiet?” one of the older men snapped, pointing a trembling finger at him. “Let me tell you something, James. All of our names are on that blacklist. Every single one of us. You somehow you’re not. But the rest of us? We’re done. Contracts cancelled. Loans pulled. Reputation smeared. And it all started with what happened to you.”
At that moment James opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
James’s chest rose and fell rapidly, his heart pounding. But no matter how hard he tried to search his mind, everything was blank-except one name that kept scratching at the back of his memory like a ghost he didn’t want to see.
He leaned back against the chair, eyes heavy with confusion and pain, his voice now
nothing more than a whisper.
CT DJ –
And if all of this was triggered by him, then maybe-just maybe-it was her.
He had humiliated her. Betrayed her. Thrown away years she had given him years he now knew were built on sacrifice, on something more than he ever understood.
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James had tried to forget that moment. He’d told himself it was a misunderstanding, that maybe Cora had powerful friends, maybe it was just coincidence, just bad timing. He had clung to that belief like a lifeline in a storm.
At that moment, James could feel it the weight of every gaze in the room pressing down on him like a boulder on his chest.
“…you’re all looking at me like I’m the cause of it.”
All of it… somehow traced back to him.
At that moment he shook his head slowly, still refusing to let the thought settle. “No,” he told himself again. “Not Cora. She was angry. She was hurt. But she wouldn’t do this…
right?”
He had lived with Cora for over two years. He had shared her quiet moments, her fragile smiles, her silence, and her strength. He thought he knew her. She was humble. She was
quiet. She didn’t even seem to care about the things most rich women clung to.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” one of them barked, his voice filled with disbelief.
“You were publicly thrown out of the most important event in the city, humiliated like a
nobody! And now you’re sitting here pretending you don’t know what happened? Do you
think we’re fools?”
He couldn’t breathe properly.
They began to close in on him, not physically aggressive yet-but the message was clear. They were furious, and they weren’t going to let this go.
He paused, his chest rising and falling quickly as if he were choking on the truth he didn’t
know how to say.
“Don’t!” another man snapped. “Don’t you dare swear anything if it’s not the truth. We
won’t take that crap from you.”
At that moment, hearing what James just said, the tension in the room exploded like a
firecracker.
3 × E = I
“I swear… I don’t know the person you’re looking for.”
He swallowed hard.
“I don’t know what any of you did. I don’t know what person you’re talking about. I don’t know who she is, I don’t know what she means to the Victor. I’m just as clueless as you all
are.”
But now…Now the dots were connecting whether he wanted them to or not.
And inside his head… only one name echoed louder than the anger surrounding him.
