They did it in the bright glare so everyone could see, the kind of public shaming that reads well on feeds and worse in boardrooms, Jace standing in the middle like a skinned animal and smiling because pride hates a limp exit, because if he didn't say yes they'd carve him up on terms he could never swallow.
Ethan's laugh cut through the applause, clean and practiced, and the camera at the back of the hall hummed like a small, hungry insect, recording the exact moment Jace signed his own undoing. He said it like a dare, because ego lives on dares, because the market loves spectacle, he'll travel the world for three months without private jets without money without influence like some king dressed down for a pantomime, and if he fails he sells a stake of Kavanagh, ten percent, gone to the highest liar in the room. They clapped, bottles clicked, someone whistled, and Jace felt the drop between his ribs where he kept everything valuable, where a man stores the truth he never wants to lose.
"You're mental," Sienna said beside him, lipstick perfect, voice the sort that makes rich people forgive themselves for sins, she meant it in a laugh but he heard threat, she loved him on a leash and hated the thought of him off it.
"Make it interesting then," he told the cameras, turning the dare into spectacle because that was what he did, twist fate into headlines, and in the dozen flashes afterward he felt less like a man and more like an idea someone else could edit.
They took his passport and his cards for theatre, his lawyer making notes as if this were an exercise in tax law rather than a wound being salted. He left the hall with fewer people than he'd arrived with, the night smelling of spilled wine and cheap cologne, and he caught himself counting the steps, the habit of a man who measures anything he can buy, the hotel lights like a faint constellation of things he could no longer touch without permission.
Lisbon hit him like a train, cobbles and light and a tram whistle that sounded like a laugh, and for a few hours he tried the ordinary life like a hand in a glove that didn't fit, paying for a coffee with a single card, waiting in a queue, listening to someone hum a fado by the window and feeling small and exhibitioned, a rich man out of place and reaching for the old armor that wasn't there. He had no idea how to look at a map without being guided, how to answer a local's question without sounding like a man reading from a script, and that was the point, he told himself, this is theatre, humility by trial, after all it's just three months.
"Oi, you, with the storm cloud," a voice said, and Jace turned to see a woman stepping through a line of market stalls like she owned the street though she clearly didn't, dark curls messy, a camera hanging like a pendant, eyes that pinned him without flattery. She had the tired, easy composure of someone who sleeps badly and loves what she does, and when she looked at him he felt exposed in a primitive way, like a mirror had been stuck to his chest and someone was taking notes.
"You look lost, or like you ate something that didn't agree with you," she said, and there was a smirk that shouldn't have been that sharp in the morning, a tone that said don't assume anything and mean it.
"Neither," he said, because a billionaire learns to answer without giving, but she cocked her head like a dog that knew the rouse.
"You're the man from the feed," she said, camera pointed like a question. "The one who bet his company, right, it's all a bit mental, no offense."
He felt himself bristle, defense a muscle he used with precision. "And you are?"
"Maya," she said, like it explained everything, like a name is a kind of passport, and Jace, who'd bought names like rare whiskey, found it oddly disarming.
She snapped a photo, quick and clean, like she was taking down a fact. He wanted to tell her to delete it, to file it into the same drawer as the lawyers' notes and the headlines, but that sounded like demand, and he was supposed to be the one learning to be smaller, so he smiled the smile that had closed deals and opened doors and it looked ridiculous on a cobbled street, he knew it.
"You're not from the tour," she said, tapping her camera screen like a verdict, and there was, suddenly, movement, a small crowd closing in because people love to watch rich people flounder, it's a national pastime.
"Just passing," he said, and she laughed, a short, incredulous sound that made the vendor sell less oranges.
"Passers-by don't sign public wagers on losing a chunk of their company and then eat pastéis at the same table as everyone else," she said, and the market seemed to tilt for a second, the vendors' voices blending into a hum that sounded almost like a chorus of judgmental relatives.
He tried to walk away, it's what he always did when conversation demanded intimacy, but she called after him, "You look a bit knackered, Jace, wants a guide or a cup of humility, it's one euro a sip."
"Who's paying you to be so charming," he asked, half grin, and she didn't answer, only clicked another photo, and something in him gave, a small, childish want to be seen in a way that wasn't about shares and screenshots.
Later that night, they found themselves at the same hostel because of the city's cruel habit of routing all strangers through the same narrow streets, and the dorm smelled of detergent and too many damp towels, and Maya argued the top bunk was a bad look for a man who'd just lost his glint. He argued back, a practiced jibe, and then the conversation got stupid and soft at once, two people leaning too close over a cheap bottle of wine, language stumbling into confessions.
"You do one of those bets every decade or is this a new hobby," she said, voice low, half amused, half dangerous.
"It's the sort of thing men do to prove to other men they still matter," he said, and she laughed, then she kissed him like someone agreeing to a truce and it was messy, a dare, his mouth on hers for a heartbeat that felt like a cliff, and she pulled away first, breath hot in the crowded room.
"Don't get cute," she said, and there was more than warning in the words, there was history between women like her and men like him that she didn't want to rewrite.
He slept badly and in the morning the street had already swallowed the hostel's noise, the city carrying on with indifferent grace, but inside his pocket his phone vibrated, a single message that felt like a brick; a video, a clip, short and vicious, Ethan's grin larger than life as he raised his glass to cameras and in the background a voice he knew too well said, "this is more than a bet, he's got to prove he can remember what ordinary feels like without breaking, and if he can't we'll make him break properly."
Maya was watching him when he shouldered his pack, camera in hand like a shield, and she saw the way his jaw tightened around the message without knowing its words, and asked, quiet, "Heard something that isn't the tram."
He opened the video and for a second the room felt unreal, colors too vivid, the fado from the lane outside swelling like an answer, and in the clip a name flashed on the screen of someone in the background, not his rivals, a name he hadn't expected to see, one that belonged to someone very dangerous, someone who had no patience for games. He swallowed and the hostel seemed to tilt again, the ordinary world suddenly threaded with knives.
"Who is that," Maya asked, and before he could answer a man at the doorway cleared his throat and said, "You two are a right pair, ain't you, didn't expect to find a billionaire in the bunk beds," his phone up, a grin, and the photo he took pinged away like a flare.
The grin on the man's face went straight to a name Jace didn't want on anyone's lips, and Maya, looking at the screen as if it could tell the future, said, "Someone's watching us," and the camera at the other man's hand lit, a little green dot like a moth, and Jace knew in a way he'd never known anything that this wasn't just about pride or headlines, it was personal, and that thought hit like cold rain.