Chapter 12 - THE FALLEN PRINCESS
-12-
"Natasha," I greeted, my voice calm, measured, and utterly devoid of warmth. I didn't invite her to sit down; I simply stood behind the obsidian table, watching her with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a particularly pathetic lab specimen.
Natasha swallowed hard, her eyes darting nervously around the sprawling, multi-million-dollar boardroom before fixing back on me. The sheer contrast between our current realities was physically painful to watch.
"I know I shouldn't be here," Natasha stammered, her hands gripping the straps of a cheap, worn canvas backpack. "I know what my family did... what I did to you at the St. Jude Gala. I was a monster, Evangeline. I was arrogant, cruel, and completely blind."
"Yes," I agreed smoothly. "You were. In fact, you were remarkably thorough about it."
Natasha flinched, tears instantly welling up in her eyes. She took another shaky step forward, dropping heavily to her knees right on the pristine white marble floor—the exact same pose her brother had attempted six months ago.
"Please, Evangeline, you have to help me," Natasha sobbed, pressing her hands together in a desperate, pleading gesture. "My parents are living in a tiny apartment in Europe off charity handouts from distant relatives. Brandon is working illegally as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Queens, hiding from his creditors. And me? I’m sleeping on the couch of a friend who charges me rent I can't afford."
"And so you decided to come to the girl whose dress you ripped, whose dignity you tried to strip away in front of two hundred people, asking for charity?" I asked, raising a single eyebrow.
"I didn't know who you were!" Natasha cried out, the defense sounding hollow even to her own ears. "If I had known you were Arthur Harrison’s daughter, I never would have—"
I cut her off with a sharp, imperious gesture of my hand.
"Stop right there, Natasha," I commanded, my voice dropping into a register that made her instantly clamp her mouth shut.
I walked slowly around the obsidian table, stopping a few feet away from her kneeling form.
"Do you hear yourself?" I asked quietly, looking down at her with absolute disgust. "Even now, even after losing everything, your primary regret isn't that you were a vicious, bullying human being. Your regret is that you picked the wrong target. If I had been a genuine charity case, if I had actually been a struggling designer with no money and no last name, you would still be laughing at me today."
Natasha’s lower lip quivered. She couldn't deny it because the cold, ugly truth of her character was laid bare for both of us to see.
"You thought wealth and status gave you the right to determine who deserved respect," I continued, my voice steady and unyielding. "You thought humanity was a hierarchy where you sat near the top. But you forgot one fundamental law of the universe: empires built on cruelty always crumble from within."
"Is there... is there no mercy?" Natasha wept, her forehead touching the marble floor. "Can't you just give me a job? Anything! An entry-level file clerk, a receptionist—I'll work twenty hours a day, I swear!"
I looked down at her for a long moment, feeling no anger, no satisfaction—only a profound, pitying indifference.
"Marcus," I called out.
"Boss?" Marcus stepped out from the side alcove, his expression carved from stone.
"Escort Miss Sterling out of the building. And make sure building security adds her name to the permanent blacklist. She is never to set foot in a Harrison property again."
"With pleasure," Marcus said, grabbing Natasha firmly by the arm and hauling her upright before she could process the refusal.
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"Evangeline! No! Please! You can't do this!" Natasha shrieked, thrashing wildly as Marcus marched her toward the private elevator. "Have a heart!"
"I do have a heart, Natasha," I whispered to the empty room as the elevator doors chimed shut. "That's why I'm teaching you how the real world works."
