Drew rage grew when he saw the look on Steven’s face. He had hoped to embarrass him by calling him out as a nobody, but he hadn’t expected Steven to turn it around by calling out the situations he wants to forget the most.

He knew that he has reframe the conversation or he’s going to be the one that would lose face. And one thing he doesn’t want to experience again was losing face to Steven.

His rage flickered behind his eyes for only a moment before the smug smile returned. He had remembered something and that was enough to turn around the situation.

He turned to the group behind him and raised his voice just enough to carry it through the group and those closeby.

"Everyone, I want to introduce someone." He gestured toward Steven. "This is Steven Craig. He was waiting tables at a single location place restaurant in Montrose until fairly recently. Nothing you’d know."

He let that sit for a moment, waiting for the expected reaction.

The group received it the way Drew had intended. Eyes moved to Steven with the look of people assessing someone and trying to understand what he was doing in a place they shouldn’t have access to.

Drew turned and caught the eye of the host, who had drifted to the outer edge of the group.

"Edward," Drew said. "You should meet him."

Edward Langford was in his late twenties. He had the bearing of someone who had grown up being taught how to stand in rooms like this one and had learned it well enough, though there was still something in his eyes that suggested he was paying close attention to everything. Tonight, he was hosting the gathering on his parents’ order, as one of the ways for him to grow into his roles in the future.

He looked at Steven with the open look of assessment, as he formed his own opinion of Steven.

Steven turned to him first, extending his hand, as he realised that Langford was the host of the gathering from the way Drew had called his name and spoken to him with what sounded forced familiarity.

It seems like you sold your ego to get me that invitation card, Drew, He sneered internally.

"Mr. Langford. Steven Craig. Thank you for the evening. Your home is something else."

Langford took his hand. "Mr. Craig." His tone was even and genuinely attentive. His eyes stayed on Steven a moment longer than they had stayed on most people that evening.

Steven turned back to Drew and the group, looking completely unbothered by his Drew had introduced him.

"Thank you, Drew," he said. "I appreciate the introduction." He paused, as though turning something over in his head. "Though I’ll be honest — I didn’t realise I’d made enough of an impression that you felt the need to look into me." He paused and looked at Drew directly in the eye. "That must have taken real effort."

The expression of one of the men in the group, changed slightly. And the lady beside him, glanced at Drew.

"Consider it curiosity," Drew said.

"Curiosity," Steven repeated, as though the word itself was interesting. "You had someone run a background check on me out of curiosity." He nodded slowly. "I’m flattered. Though whoever you used, they seem to have stopped a little early. They found the restaurant. They didn’t find much else."

"There isn’t much else to find," Drew said.

Steven looked at him for a moment, then smiled. It was the smile of someone watching a hand being played that he had already seen the end of.

"Like I said, whoever you used stopped early," Steven said. "There’s a structure they missed." He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Though I suppose when everything you have is borrowed, you’d naturally assume the same is true for everyone else. I don’t hold it against him."

Drew looked at Steven, slightly curious. The silence had stretched long enough that he couldn’t leave it alone.

"What structure?" he said, trying to sound dismissive but the curiosity in his voice could not be fully hidden.

"Next time when you do a background check on someone, do it properly," Steven replied.

He wasn’t going to say anything about JP Morgan or Halcyon Trust and Fiduciary. He has no desire of announcing himself or explaining himself to Drew.

Drew smiled smugly, when he heard Steven’s response, as he thought that Steven was just trying to raise his nonexistent status and sound mysterious.

Without hesitation, he called Steven out for his bullsh*t.

"Stop putting on airs. What you are is a nobody. Don’t try to sound mysterious, saying that a structure was missed. What structure exactly? The one in your dreams? Or want to tell us that you’re under a trust?" He said.

Steven sighed softly when he heard Drew’s words, as it made him realise that Drew wasn’t going to back down easily untill one of them has been humiliated.

And since humiliation was what Drew was after, he would gladly give him to him.

"I came out of curiosity to see what you had planned. It seems the answer is this." He glanced briefly at the group, then back at Drew. "I’ve seen enough."

Steven turned away from Drew entirely, as though the conversation had already ended, and looked at Langford.

"Mr. Langford," he said. "I owe you an apology. I was brought here under someone else’s invitation and I should have introduced myself to you properly when I arrived. That was discourteous and I’m sorry for it." He paused. "Your hospitality has been generous regardless. Thank you for the evening."

Langford looked at him for a moment with the same attentive, assessing look he had since the whole exchange. Then he gave a single nod.

"Mr. Craig," he said. "You’re welcome back any time."

It was a simple sentence. But in with everyone present having watched the last several minutes unfold, it landed with the full weight of what it meant. An open invitation, extended by the host, to the man Drew had brought here to humiliate.

Steven nodded once in return, then turned and walked back through the room the way he had come in, moving with leisure pace and an unchanged expression.

Behind him, he could feel the weight of the room’s attention following him to the door rather than staying with Drew. But he didn’t look back.

Drew stood where Steven had left him, watching the door for a moment after Steven had walked through it.

Then he turned back to the group with the smile already in place.

"Nobody worth worrying about," he said dismissively. "Interesting character though, I’ll give him that."

Nobody laughed.

One of the men in the group looked at Drew for a moment with an expression that was difficult to read, then turned to the woman beside him and said something quietly. She glanced once at Drew, then away, and the two of them drifted toward the far side of the room without a word of explanation.

Another man nodded once in Drew’s direction and turned back to his own conversation as though the last ten minutes hadn’t happened.

The woman who had been watching from the back of the group said something to the person beside her, her voice low enough that Drew couldn’t catch it.

The person she said it to looked briefly in the direction Steven had gone, then back at her, with an expression of clear interest. They moved away together, talking.

Langford had not moved immediately after Steven left. He had stood where he was for a moment.

Then he turned and looked at Drew directly.

It wasn’t a long look. It lasted perhaps two seconds. There was no anger in it, no visible judgment, nothing that could be pointed to as a specific expression.

It was simply a look that communicated clearly that Langford had seen everything that had happened and had formed a conclusion about it that he had no intention of discussing.

Then he turned away.

He crossed the room toward two guests near the far window, greeting them with ease and warmth of a host returning to his duties, and the conversation he started with them had a natural, unforced flow.

He did not look in Drew’s direction again for the remainder of the evening.

For Drew, who understood these rooms and what happened in them, the absence of any further acknowledgement from the host of the gathering he was standing in was not a minor thing. It was the most public possible conclusion to the evening, delivered without a single word.

Within two minutes, the group had dissolved entirely and Drew was left standing in a space that had been full thirty seconds ago.

He looked around.

A short distance away, near the edge of the room, two men he recognised from the periphery of the gathering were talking in low voices, one of them glancing once in his direction with an expression that didn’t bother to conceal what it was.

The other one said something and they both looked away, the conversation continuing with the suppressed energy of people working through something they found distasteful.

Further along, a small cluster of women had formed near one of the tall windows. One of them was speaking animately, as she relayed they had just witnessed. The others were listening attentively. One of them looked up, found Drew across the room, and looked away again quickly. But not quickly enough, Drew’s eyes met hers.

Near the entrance to the hallway, a man Drew had spoken to earlier in the evening caught his eye for a fraction of a second, then looked deliberately away, redirecting his attention to the person beside him.

Drew stood in the middle of all of it, the smile still technically in place, and understood with complete clarity what had just happened.

He had arranged the entire evening with a specific outcome in mind. He had brought the room together, positioned himself at the centre of it, and delivered everything exactly as he had planned. And the room had watched it happen and drawn its own conclusions, which were not the conclusions he had intended.

The smile faded immediately when he realised that.

What replaced it was cold and extremely dangerous thought.

He reached for a glass from a passing server’s tray without looking at the server, took a slow sip, and looked at the door through which Steven had left.

He had underestimated him. Twice now, in two different rooms, in front of two different audiences, and the result had been the same both times.

He wasn’t going to underestimate him a third time.

He didn’t know yet what the next move was. But he knew there would be one. And he knew that when he made it, there would be no audience to watch it happen and no room for Steven to walk out of with anything intact.

He set the glass down, straightened his jacket, and walked toward the far end of the room, away from the whispers and the glances and the sound of a conversation he was no longer the subject of in any way he had planned for.