Chapter Eight #2
Gabriela’s chest heaved. The angelic facade was cracking, revealing the desperate, manipulative core beneath.
"Why are you looking at me like that? Marcy was my best friend! And Kinsley... Kinsley was Marcy’s best friend, so by default, we were friends too!
Why would I ever intentionally want to hurt them? "
Cruz Tate let out a sound that was half-scoff, half-snarl. His dark eyes were pinned on her, cold and merciless.
"We all grew up together!" Gabriela cried, tears spilling over her eyelashes in a flawless, practiced display of victimhood.
"We were practically siblings! Sure, we had disagreements, we had fights in the car, but isn't that normal?
Kade, Cruz, didn't you two fight all through your childhood?
Leon, Connor, didn't you? Boys fight all the time!
Why would girls fighting be any different?
I just lost my temper for a second, it was just a fight! "
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of her gaslighting hung in the air.
She was actually trying to equate a momentary childhood squabble to maliciously framing an innocent orphan for a near-fatal car crash, letting her suffer two years of psychological torture, and demanding the destruction of her life.
The four men stared at her. They saw right through the tears. They saw right through the trembling lip and the desperate, pleading eyes. The flawless performance that had blinded them for over two decades was finally transparent.
A wave of sickening self-disgust washed over Kade. He looked at Cruz, and he knew his best friend was thinking the exact same thing.
How could they have been so monumentally stupid?
How could they, men who prided themselves on their unmatched intellect, men who were hailed as the Titans of the Western Hemisphere, billionaires who commanded global markets and legacy empires, be so pathetically fooled by one woman’s acting?
They had allowed this manipulative sociopath to turn them into monsters.
They had physically and emotionally destroyed two beautiful, innocent, fiercely loyal women because they had been too arrogant, too blind to see the viper in their own garden.
They were the biggest dumbasses on the face of the earth.
"You are pathetic," Cruz said. The chilling deadness in his voice made Gabriela freeze mid-sob. "You aren't a victim, Gabriela. You are a parasite. You fed on Marcy’s kindness for twenty years to hide your own rotten core."
"Cruz, please—"
"Save the performance," Kade interrupted, buttoning his suit jacket with a terrifying, clinical precision. He looked at her not with anger, but with the cold, detached gaze of an executioner. "We aren't here to listen to your lies. We are here to tell you that your reign is over."
The Ashford Heights Founders' Gala was the crown jewel of the social season, a glittering, opulent affair held in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. It was a sea of bespoke tuxedos, million-dollar diamonds, and the elite, untouchable powerbrokers of the city.
The Monroe family arrived with all the pomp and circumstance of royalty, Arthur and Camille parading Gabriela through the crowd, basking in the murmurs of sympathy and admiration for the brave, recovered heiress.
They didn't see the guillotine until the blade was already falling.
It didn't happen with a dramatic speech at a microphone. The Lancaster and Tate brothers were far too ruthless, far too calculating for something so pedestrian. They dismantled the Monroe legacy the way billionaires do systematically, financially, and socially.
It started with whispers. Cruz Tate, standing near the champagne tower, quietly informed the CEO of the national banking conglomerate that Tate Enterprises was withdrawing all financial backing from the Monroe development projects, citing a "severe moral hazard" within the Monroe executive family.
Across the room, Kade Lancaster cornered three of the most influential board members of the Ashford Philanthropic Society.
With a few clipped, icy sentences, he outlined the existence of the decrypted dashcam audio, ensuring the board members understood exactly who had jerked the steering wheel, and who had maliciously framed Marcy Dane.
Like blood in shark-infested waters, the whispers spread through the ballroom at a terrifying speed.
Gabriela felt the shift before she heard the words. The warm, fawning smiles of the elite suddenly vanished, replaced by cold, calculating stares. As she walked toward the buffet, the crowds parted, but not in reverence—they stepped away from her as if she were carrying a plague.
Panic seized her throat. She found Kade standing near one of the marble pillars, sipping a glass of bourbon.
"What are you doing?" Gabriela hissed, stepping into his personal space, her eyes wild with fear. "People are looking at me... they’re whispering about the accident!"
Kade looked down at her, his expression blank. "They are whispering about the truth, Gabriela."
"You can't do this!" she hissed, trying to force tears into her eyes, playing the only card she had left. "You are ruining my family! You are ruining me! I am the victim here! Those vengeful charity cases hated me, they—"
"If you ever speak their names again," Cruz’s voice materialized from behind her, so cold it seemed to drop the ambient temperature of the ballroom, "I will ensure that your family is completely bankrupt by Monday morning."
Gabriela spun around, her breath hitching at the terrifying, dead look in Cruz Tate’s eyes.
"Your legacy is done, Gabriela," Leon Lancaster said, stepping up beside his brother.
"Every board seat your father holds will be challenged by tomorrow.
Every charity you patronize will reject your money.
You are going to experience exactly what you forced Marcy to experience for two years. Complete isolation."
Gabriela opened her mouth to scream, to cry, to make a scene, but Arthur Monroe suddenly grabbed her arm, his face ashen, having just been informed by a gleeful rival that his credit lines were being aggressively severed.
***
The public ruin was absolute. Brick by brick, the golden pedestal was smashed into dust. The abuse, the accident, the sheer, calculated viciousness of the Monroe Heiress became the only topic of conversation in Ashford Heights.
The following morning, the Monroe empire was in freefall.
The frosted glass doors of the Lancaster-Tate fiftieth-floor executive office burst open, slamming violently against the walls.
Gabriela Monroe stormed into the room, bypassing the terrified security detail who had tried to stop her.
She was livid, her hair disheveled, her designer dress wrinkled.
The pristine, angelic facade was completely gone, leaving only a desperate, cornered animal.
"You fix this!" Gabriela screamed, her voice cracking hysterically as she marched toward the obsidian conference table. "You fix this right now! The banks are freezing our assets! My mother hasn't stopped crying! You cannot destroy my life over two pathetic orphans!"
Cruz Tate was sitting at the head of the table.
He didn't even blink. He didn't rise. He simply stared at her, his dark eyes so empty, so profoundly chilling, that the manic scream died in Gabriela’s throat.
He looked at her as if she were a stain on the carpet, unworthy of a single syllable of his time.
Kade Lancaster stood by the window, his back to the room, looking out at the city he was aggressively conquering. He didn't bother turning around. Her presence meant less than nothing to him.
Gabriela stood trembling in the center of the vast office, the terrifying silence of the two titans crushing her.
"Security is on their way up, Gabriela," Connor Tate said smoothly, stepping out from the shadows near the doorway, accompanied by Leon.
"You can't just ignore me!" Gabriela shrieked, turning her wrath on the younger brothers. "I am Gabriela Monroe! We are family!"
"We were never family," Leon said, his voice firm, resolute, and devoid of pity. "You were an illusion. A very sick, very cruel illusion. And the show is over."
"Escort her out," Connor instructed the two burly security guards who had just arrived breathless at the doorway.
He looked back at Gabriela, his expression hardening into stone.
"And if she ever sets foot in this building, or on any Lancaster or Tate property again, have her arrested for trespassing. "
"Kade! Cruz!" Gabriela screamed, struggling frantically as the guards grabbed her arms, dragging her backward toward the doors. "You can't do this to me! I loved you! We belong together!"
Cruz finally picked up his pen, signing a document on his desk, the scratch of the ink loud in the echoing room. Kade kept his eyes on the horizon, his thoughts thousands of miles away on a jagged, southwestern coastline, praying that wherever Marcy was, she was smiling.
The glass doors swung shut, cutting off Gabriela’s hysterical screams, sealing the tomb on the Monroe legacy forever.