In the days that followed, Zola lived as though she had slipped into two irreconcilable fissures of time.
By day, she was the Zola who sat hunched in the corner of the library, breathing as quietly as if even the sound of her lungs might offend someone. The bullying did not stop after that lavish dinner—on the contrary, it fermented into something dirtier, fueled by the sight of that Bentley gliding too conspicuously to a halt beneath the dormitory windows.
"Did you see that? Chauffeur service," someone muttered, laughter pressed low and sticky, buzzing like flies as she passed. "That's not just a date. That's something… arranged, don't you think?"
"No matter how nicely it's wrapped, inside it's still—"
The sentence was always cut off at its most poisonous point, leaving imagination to do the rest.
That afternoon in the library, she had just set her books down by an empty seat near the window when the Vietnamese girl beside her—always alone, supported entirely by a full scholarship in mathematics, a quiet presence who kept a clear distance from Sophia's circle and spoke only through grades—lifted her eyes and looked at Zola.
There was no envy in that gaze. No curiosity. Only a precise, icy distance.
Without a word, the girl swiftly gathered her things and left the area, as though Zola carried some invisible pathogen capable of contaminating the academic air.
Group projects became public executions. When the professor announced the group lists and Zola saw her name hanging there alone—while others completed their alliances with quick glances and subtle gestures—the humiliation cut deeper than words ever could. In the end, a usually mild-mannered student approached the professor during the break, face flushed, stumbling over an excuse about "scheduling conflicts" and asking to be reassigned.
The professor glanced at the list, then at Zola, standing alone. His expression flickered with something complicated. He nodded.
In that moment, Zola felt like a defective item returned to sender—her very right to exist quietly revoked.
And yet, when night fell, when she curled alone on the narrow dormitory bed, the day's coldness and sting would gradually fade, overwritten by another kind of memory—hot, unreal.
She replayed every detail of that dinner, over and over, like a miser counting hoarded coins.
She could no longer recall the restaurant's name. Only the vertiginous height of its dome, the chandeliers—there was not one, but a whole nebula—each perfectly cut crystal singing a hymn to money and light. The air was thick with a scent that blended old wood, rare flowers, and premium cigars—so dense it felt almost tangible.
Well-dressed men and women was not a metaphor there; it was a living tableau. Silk skirts brushed across polished floors with barely audible whispers. Jewelry glimmered at throats and wrists, restrained yet commanding. Men spoke in low tones; cufflinks and glass rims occasionally touched, producing crisp, disciplined sounds.
She had felt as though she'd wandered onto the set of an old Hollywood film—everything running flawlessly along its tracks, except for her.
The wine had been recommended by the sommelier. Its vintage and origin sounded like a foreign scripture to her. Alex gestured for her to try it. The deep garnet liquid slid into the glass like flowing velvet. She mimicked his movements, swirling it gently—and nearly spilled it.
She brought it to her lips, sipped carefully. The flavor burst with force—tannins sharp enough to draw a barely perceptible crease between her brows, followed by a heavy aftertaste she couldn't name, thick with oak and dark berries. She swallowed with effort, then coughed softly, startled by its unfamiliar intensity.
Alex merely smiled. He said nothing, as though it were an inconsequential moment.
The real farce came midway through the meal. She reached for a strangely shaped silver fork meant for one of the seafood courses, her elbow knocking into a slender tulip glass filled with sparkling water. The glass struck the marble floor and shattered, the sound crisp and jarring—like a stone dropped into a still lake.
Instantly, the gazes from nearby tables—curious, appraising, faintly amused—converged on her. Zola's face burned. Blood rushed to her ears, a loud hum filling her head.
The waiter appeared without a sound, clearing the shards and replacing the glass with professional speed, as if nothing had occurred. And Alex—Alex never so much as frowned. He continued calmly with his dessert, using his delicate silver spoon, and when she stammered an apology, he said gently, "It's alright. Don't worry."
It was precisely that don't worry—that serene tolerance of her clumsiness—that, in hindsight, acquired a near-sacred glow. He had not mocked her. He had not grown impatient. Not once had he revealed even the faintest suggestion that she did not belong.
That restraint unbalanced her more than any flattery could have. She interpreted it as a vast, silent approval—approval of her difference, enough for him to overlook such flaws.
By rehearsing these details again and again, she managed to siphon a trace of imagined warmth to survive the daytime ice. She began to believe that perhaps she truly possessed some hidden, extraordinary allure—otherwise, why would a man like Alex, stationed so high above the clouds, accustomed to endless beauty, show such patience and such… generosity toward her?
The dark blue velvet box became her most secret reliquary, her private source of energy. Late at night, she would lock the door, draw the curtains, and open it again beneath the desk lamp. The diamonds still burned cold and fierce.
She even resorted to crude tests she'd found online—breathing on the stones, wrapping a strand of hair around them, drawing lines on white paper. She knew these methods were hardly scientific, but when the signs appeared to match, a dizzying blend of vanity and confirmation seized her.
They were real.
Something this valuable—and he had given it to her so casually.
The realization worked like a powerful anesthetic, temporarily numbing every humiliation she endured by day. She grew increasingly absorbed in this private, elevated world built of memory and stone.
The cost was that the real world became unbearable.
The library turned into a tribunal. The cafeteria into a rumor exchange. Even chance encounters in hallways left her nerves stretched taut. She began to retreat wherever possible. Outside of compulsory classes—and even then, she arrived early, left late, and took the farthest corner seat—she borrowed every book back to her dorm.
The place that had once offered her solace and strength now stood closed to her. Or rather, she had closed it herself—turning away from it to retreat into a fragile, solitary fortress constructed from expensive memories and cold diamonds.
Outside the fortress, the wind howled.
Inside, she clung to the brief favor of a man and the reflected light of a stone, struggling to preserve a crumbling sense of dignity—and the illusion of warmth.
Nina stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of her office, her fingers gliding across the smooth surface of a tablet. The screen cast a cold blue glow onto her expressionless face. One item after another populated the display—Zola's profile, laid out with clinical clarity, like a quality-inspection report for a product awaiting sale.
Parents: construction materials business in a second-tier city in southern C-country. Decent scale—upper middle class at best, separated from Alex's world by light-years.
Academic record: solid. No known substance abuse or behavioral issues (at least on record).
Social ties: strikingly simple, almost transparent.
There were even a few candid campus photos. Zola dressed plainly, her eyes holding either an unseasoned concentration or a slightly awkward silence at the margins of crowds. Included, too, were notes—somehow obtained—about her recent isolation in the library, her failure to be placed in group assignments. Everything had been gathered, cross-checked, assembled.
When Alex had asked for the report, his tone had been light—no different from requesting a coffee. But Nina knew what it meant. It signaled interest. The kind one felt when noticing a finely shaped porcelain piece in a display window, its glaze unusually clear.
Nina compiled the file, expression unchanged, and sent it to Alex's encrypted inbox. To her, it was routine—no different from watering plants or reserving a restaurant for tomorrow's meeting. She had long since cultivated a heart of stone. No sympathy. No judgment. Only execution.
The women who drifted toward Alex tended to share similar endings. The best walked away quietly with generous "parting gifts." Others struggled longer, resisted harder, before being crushed by a colder reality.
Alex reclined in a high-backed velvet chair in the smoking room of his private club, an unlit Cohiba resting between his fingers. His gaze lingered on the skyline sinking into dusk, though his focus seemed fixed somewhere far beyond it. Zola's report had already passed through his mind—brief, unremarkable.
And precisely because of that… intriguing.
Women were never in short supply around him. They arrived as if filtered by an invisible ecosystem, presenting themselves as options: socialites, actresses, artists, prodigies, ambitious nouveaux riches from every field imaginable. All beautiful. All intelligent. All refined by layers of social Darwinism, carrying their trophies and survival strategies with practiced ease.
They knew when to speak of Jeff Koons and when of Tracey Emin, which vintage of Pétrus paired best with venison. Even their flirtation—the glances, the hesitation—moved like a rehearsed dance, precise in rhythm, flawless in execution.
At first, this seamless compatibility had given him a sense of efficient pleasure. Over time, it dulled into boredom. Like dining daily on Michelin three-star tasting menus—perfect in every course, yet lacking… surprise.
They wanted too much to please him. Or rather, to validate themselves through pleasing him. And so they wrapped away the clumsy, fallible parts of themselves, presenting only impeccably curated masks aligned with upper-class aesthetics.
Zola was a doodle that had wandered in by accident—awkward strokes, uneven lines.
He recalled the way she'd lifted the wine glass that night. Her fingers tightened slightly, knuckles paling, as though the glass were not wine but something fragile, sacred, demanding absolute attention. She mimicked his movements, swirling stiffly, the liquid's vortex slow and clumsy. Then she drank—not an elegant sip, but a tentative swallow.
Her brows knit instantly—not performative, but a direct bodily response to an unfamiliar, forceful taste. She even choked slightly on the tannins, covering her mouth, lashes trembling, two genuine flushes blooming across her cheeks.
How… alive.
And then the broken glass. The sharp crack rang out, and he had seen it clearly from the corner of his eye. Her body froze, like a startled fawn caught mid-step. Blood rushed from her neck to the tips of her ears, even her small earlobes turning red.
It was a raw mixture of embarrassment, panic, and self-reproach—unfiltered by etiquette, unpolished by social reflex. She didn't immediately summon a practiced, apologetic smile. She didn't attempt verbal finesse. She simply stood there, helpless, eyes darting between him and the shards on the floor, before settling on her own tightly clasped fingers.
That clumsiness.
Those cracks born of unfamiliar rules.
That awkward attempt to belong—and constant failure to do so—
It flowed through his dulled senses like an unpolluted spring, cutting through layers of perfume, calculation, and flawless performance.
What he felt was not lust. It was something closer to childlike amusement. A creator's curiosity.
He saw her as raw jade of passable quality, uncarved. Or a pristine canvas—fine material, entirely blank. In his world, she was astonishingly empty. Her tastes. Her sense of luxury. Her instinct for advance and retreat—all unformed, not yet hardened by that world's complex rules.
Which meant opportunity.
And authority.
He could color her. Shape her. Gradually bestow gloss.
He liked that absolute control—the quiet power of peeling someone from their original trajectory and easing them into his own orbit. It offered a deeper satisfaction than conquering a woman already perfected by the system.
Zola's "innocence" and "inexperience" were not flaws. They were precisely the material qualities he prized. Her flustered movements, her imitation that always betrayed itself, the look she gave him—curiosity tangled with fear and unconscious attraction—
All of it formed a living object still in the making. Something to observe. To guide. To savor—the process of cultivation itself.
He set the cigar down beside the silver ashtray, still unlit. The faintest curve touched his lips—almost imperceptible.
How long this interest would last, he didn't know. Nor did he care to plan. For now, the girl named Zola felt like a refreshing, slightly bitter amuse-bouche—just enough to reawaken a palate dulled by excess.
As for the main course—there was no need to rush.
Outside, the city lights bloomed, brilliant and cold. Inside Alex, amusement spread like the slow, silent ripples of aged cognac in crystal. He had no urge to pull her close just yet. He preferred the distance—the watching, the measuring, the imagining of how best to apply color.
It made him feel not merely a player in the game, but the one who set its rules—and enjoyed observing its progress.
Just as Nina shut down her computer and reached for her coat, a muted commotion rose from the outer corridor. A figure stumbled in, nearly collapsing at her feet.
Svetlana.
The R country model Alex had brought to a charity gala just last month.
Nina remembered her clearly—not only for her radiant blond hair and impeccable Eastern European bone structure, but for the proprietorial disdain in her gaze at the time. Back then, Svetlana had behaved as though she already occupied the position of Alex's companion, issuing instructions to Nina with effortless entitlement.
The woman before her now was barely recognizable.
In just a few weeks, that once luminous hair had dulled, clumping with grease against a pale, drained face. Her tailored designer dress was wrinkled, stained with something unidentifiable. Her makeup had smeared away, exposing dark circles and parched skin beneath. The scent of ambition and expensive perfume had curdled into something sour, desperate.
"Nina… please. Let me see him. Just once," Svetlana rasped, her manicured nails digging painfully into Nina's arm. "Just one meeting. I only need a few words. He knows—he must know—I didn't mean it. The journalists twisted everything—"
Nina didn't move. She didn't even attempt to pull away. She simply observed the woman with eyes calm to the point of inhuman detachment—like examining a porcelain object already shattered beyond use.
"Mr. Alex has made arrangements," Nina said evenly, as though reading from a posted notice. "The compensation he has provided is sufficient to secure your livelihood for many years. Used wisely, it would allow you to purchase property in a respectable area and live comfortably."
"No! I don't want money! I want to see him!" Svetlana screamed. Tears streaked through her mascara, carving filthy grooves down her face. Desperation twisted into fury as she stared at Nina's blank expression. "You heartless bitch! You dispose of us like trash! Do you think you'll last forever?!"
Before the words finished falling—
Slap.
The sound cracked sharply through the corridor. The force turned Nina's face slightly aside. Worse still, Svetlana's sharp nails raked her cheek, leaving a thin, burning red line.
Nina slowly turned her head back. She raised a finger, touching the mark lightly. Her brow creased almost imperceptibly—not in pain, nor anger, but in mild irritation. As if her end-of-day routine had been interrupted.
She looked at Svetlana's contorted face, the ashes of madness filling eyes once bright with ambition.
She knew then: this woman was finished.
That slap had erased her last remaining scrap of grace—whatever negligible goodwill Alex might once have extended.
Almost immediately, two security guards in black suits emerged from the shadows, swift and professional, restraining Svetlana on either side.
"No! Let me go! Alex! I need to see Alex!!"
Her cries were quickly suppressed, dragged toward the elevators. Only the erratic clatter of high heels echoed down the hall—fading, fading, until silence returned.
Nina remained where she was. She straightened her perfectly undisturbed collar and hair. Her cheek still burned faintly, but her face remained blank, as though the entire scene had been nothing more than an irrelevant clip she'd closed on a screen.
She checked her watch, picked up her bag, turned off the office lights, and disappeared into the deeper night beyond the door.
To her, it was merely an inconsequential work incident.
To the girl named Zola, Svetlana's present might one day serve as a footnote to a future version of herself.
For now, that girl remained immersed in a dream woven of diamond light and gentlemanly restraint—utterly unaware.