?Chapter 1294:


    She was just a doll now. Something William paraded around when it suited him. Nothing more.


    Twenty minutester, the car pulled up in front of Royal Court Club—one of Choria’s newest ygrounds for the powerful and morally bankrupt.


    The top-floor suite oozed excess. Plush carpeting swallowed every step. The air was thick with cigar smoke, liquor, and quiet corruption.


    On the massive curved sofa lounged a handful of middle-aged men in tailored suits. Every one of them had a woman draped over him, all legs and emptyughs, wearing barely-there dresses that looked like Ste’s—maybe worse.


    And at the center of it all, William. Immacte, as always. Dark suit. Cold eyes.


    One hand wrapped around a wine ss he wasn’t even drinking from.


    No woman sat beside him.


    He didn’t acknowledge the ones stealing nces his way, either. His indifference wrapped around him like armor.


    The suite door swung open. Ste stood there in her heels, frozen in the doorway.


    She scanned the room—strangers everywhere.


    The women here were dressed just like her, cheap imitations of desire.


    She almostughed. Bitter and hollow. So this was the point. William wanted to humiliate her.


    She’d never been rich. She didn’te from money or privilege. But she’d always carried herself with dignity.


    Now, standing in a room like this, under the re of cheap neon and leering eyes—that dignity cracked.


    If Marc or her brother saw her now… She couldn’t bear to think it.


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    “What are you standing there for?” William’s voice cut through the room, smooth and sharp. “Come here.”


    She flinched at themand but stepped forward.


    Then she saw him—Steven. Sitting slightly apart from the crowd, brow furrowed.


    His eyesnded on her and widened. Shock first. Then something gentler—sympathy, maybe. Disbelief.


    He looked like he wanted to stand up and scold William. Because Ste wasn’t just anyone. And this ce—these people—it was all wrong.


    As she moved further inside, every man in the suite turned to look.


    That dress, her trembling steps, the quiet agony written all over her face—it made her a different kind of spectacle. An alluring one.


    That feeling in the air—thick and unspoken—was something between ownership and the urge to destroy.


    A few of the executives traded knowing nces, the corners of their mouths twitching up into smirks.


    Everyone here remembered how deeply William had cared for Ste once. The man had practically been ready to marry her. And now? He’d brought her in dressed like that, parading her around like some kind of lounge girl.


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