The rotunda went dead.
Eight-hundred-fifty million dollars just hanging there like a guillotine blade nobody wanted to look up at. Screens frozen on that obscene white number, throwing ghost-light across a thousand faces that suddenly forgot how to blink.
I let the silence cook. Delicious.
Valentina tried to pull herself together at the podium, scarlet silk stuck to her like she'd run a marathon in a sauna.
Amanda hadn't moved. Paddle still raised like Excalibur. Midnight velvet painted on, pulse hammering at her throat so hard I could count the beats from twenty rows back. She looked drunk on it. Victory. Attention. Me.
Her chest lifted, slow, deliberate, savoring every pair of eyes that had just watched her rewrite the food chain. Then she turned.
Found me.
Everything else in the room blurred out like cheap bokeh.
