"Sir Harrison, welcome. We were informed that you’ve taken an interest in the display necklace."

Felix’s face went from frozen to ashen in the space of a single heartbeat.

"That’s right," Stan replied.

The woman stepped past the velvet rope without hesitation. The security guard moved aside for her without being asked. She lifted the glass cover from the pedestal with practiced hands, carefully removed the necklace, all three point two million dollars of it, catching the spotlight one final time in a cascade of fractured light, and placed it in a velvet-lined presentation box.

She sealed the box, turned, and presented it to Stan with both hands.

"It’s yours, Young Master Harrison. The general manager has asked me to serve as your personal attendant for the remainder of your visit. If there’s anything else you’d like, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask."

Felix Lawn clung to one final, desperate hope: ’Maybe he won’t have the money to pay. Maybe the card will decline. Maybe,’

But then, Stan transferred three million two hundred thousand dollars without looking at the screen.

The transaction chimed. Complete. Confirmed. Three point two million, moved from one account to another in less time than it took Felix to blink.

No hesitation. No double-checking. No sharp intake of breath. Stan paid for the necklace the way most people pay for a coffee, with the casual, automatic ease of someone for whom the number simply didn’t register as significant.

The last flicker of hope in Felix’s eyes went out like a candle in a hurricane.

Stan turned to face him.

"You saw that?" His voice was cold, precise, entirely stripped of warmth. "Did I, or did I not, just buy this necklace?"

Felix said nothing.

"Just because you can’t afford something," Stan continued, each word landing with deliberate weight, "doesn’t mean I can’t. Stop measuring me by your own limitations. You’re not qualified to be my yardstick."

The words cut through Felix like wire through clay. Every insult he’d delivered throughout the day, every sneer about budgets, every jab about taxis, every smug declaration about what Stan could and couldn’t afford, was now piled up at his feet like evidence at a sentencing hearing.

He glanced sideways at Sophie, searching, hopelessly, pathetically, for any trace of sympathy.

What he found was the opposite.

Sophie was looking at him with open, undisguised contempt. Not anger. Not frustration. Disgust. The kind of deep, settled revulsion that doesn’t fade after a conversation ends, the kind that rewrites how you see a person permanently.

She knew that Stan could have ended this hours ago. A single phone call to the general manager, his subordinate, in his building, and Felix would have been escorted out by security before lunch. Stan had chosen patience instead. He’d chosen tolerance. He’d let Felix run his mouth for an entire morning, absorbing insult after insult, and had only struck back when Felix had pushed so far that silence would have been weakness.

Felix, by contrast, had spent the day stalking them through a shopping center, buying unwanted jewelry, mocking a man he didn’t understand, and systematically destroying every last gram of goodwill Sophie had ever felt toward him.

The comparison was devastating.

"Are you still here?" Sophie said, her voice quiet and final. "Leave."

Felix Lawn opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Nothing came out.

He turned on his heel and walked away, quickly, stiffly, his shoulders hunched forward as if bracing against a wind only he could feel. He didn’t look back. He didn’t say goodbye. He simply left, taking with him the expensive ring nobody wanted and the tattered remains of a dignity he would spend weeks trying to reassemble.

The atrium settled back into its ambient hum. The small crowd of onlookers dispersed. The uniformed attendant withdrew to a respectful distance.

Stan looked down at the velvet box in his hands, then held it out to Sophie.

"Here. It’s yours."

He said it lightly, casually, almost, the way a man hands someone a coffee he picked up on the way over. Three point two million dollars, tossed across the gap between them like a trinket.

<Ding!>

[Consumption rebate triggered, Target: Sophie Youngs (7×). Incoming: $22,400,000.]

The number bloomed in Stan’s mind like a sunrise, and a slow, deeply satisfied smile spread across his face.

Twenty-two million dollars. From a single necklace. The multiplier was climbing with every purchase, and at this rate, the hundred-billion-dollar mark was starting to look less like a fantasy and more like a calendar event.

Sophie, watching him smile, felt her heart do something complicated.

He’s smiling because I accepted it, she thought. He’s genuinely happy that I took his gift.

She looked down at the necklace, at the diamonds catching the atrium light, at the sapphires glowing like small blue flames, and then back up at the man who had just spent three million dollars to put it in her hands. A man who had bought her an entire building before this. A man who had faced down her cousin, a hostile campus, a viral smear campaign, and an entire morning of Felix Lawn’s relentless abuse, all without once raising his voice or losing his composure.

And I told him to buy a house just to get my Snapchat. I treated him like every other suitor. I let the forum make me cautious around him.

A wave of shame, quiet, private, but very real, washed through her.

She was about to say something when she realized Stan had already turned and was walking toward the escalator, hands in his pockets, stride unhurried.

He was leaving.

"Stan, wait."

He paused and glanced back over his shoulder.

Sophie closed the distance between them in a few quick steps, her heels clicking sharply against the marble. When she reached him, she stopped, took a breath, and looked up at his face with an expression that was stripped of all its usual composure, no cool detachment, no careful neutrality, no performance for an audience.

Just honesty.

"I owe you an apology," she said.

Stan’s brow rose slightly. "For what?"

"For everything." Her voice was quiet but steady. "For the Four Seasons Garden condition, that was cruel and I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. For being cautious around you because of a stupid internet post written by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about you. For not standing up for you sooner."