Jay's POV
The ballroom of the Watson estate felt less like a party and more like a shark tank. I was trying to reach the exit, my heart still thundering from Keifer's touch, when a wall of expensive suits blocked my path.
Clyde Watson, Keifer's cousin, stood there with a sneer that made my skin crawl.
"Leaving so soon, little girl?" Clyde mocked, swirling his champagne. "I heard you were the one Keifer was obsessed with back in school. Honestly? I don't see it. You look like you'd break if the wind blew too hard."
I ignored him and went to search for Alex so that we can leave.
Keizer Watson stepped onto the slightly raised dais, his face a mask of old-money cruelty. Beside him, Clyde smirked, his eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on me. He didn't just want to humiliate me; he wanted to annihilate me in front of the world's elite.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," Keizer's voice boomed through the microphone, dripping with condescension. "It seems my son has brought a... stray into our midst tonight. Jasper Jean Mariano."
A spotlight swung, blinding me. Murmurs rippled through the room like a snake's hiss.
"She thinks a fancy gown and a few fake diamonds make her one of us," Clyde laughed into his glass, his voice carrying to every corner of the ballroom. "But let's be real. She's a charity case. A useless girl from a broken home who thinks she can latch onto the Watson fortune. She's a leech, someone who needs a man just to breathe. She wouldn't survive a single hour in this family."
Keizer stepped closer to the edge of the stage, looking down at me as if I were dirt on his handmade shoes. "If you ever think of dragging our name into your pathetic life again, we will erase your family. We will make sure your friends in that gutter you call 'Section E' never see the light of day. You are nothing without us."
The room was suffocating. I felt the thousands of eyes—mocking, pitying, disgusted. I felt the old Jay-jay trembling, wanting to cry. But then, the Mariano blood hit my veins like liquid nitrogen.
I didn't scream. I didn't hide. I walked toward the stage, my heels clicking a steady, lethal rhythm that silenced the whispers. I reached the microphone, my face a mask of pure, crystalline ice.
"You call me useless?" I whispered, the low hum of my voice vibrating through the speakers.
"You think I need a Watson to survive?" I whispered, my voice a jagged blade that cut through the speakers, silencing the gasps And from behind Alex gave me signal,"Look at me, Keizer. Look at me, Clyde. You're not looking at a 'stray.' You're looking at the Chairman and CEO of JJM Global. I don't need a seat at your table—I own the bank that holds your mortgages."
The screens behind the stage flickered, the Watson ticker being swallowed by the golden JJM crest. The ballroom turned into a tomb.
The gasps were deafening. Keizer's face went from pale to ghostly white.
"Don't you ever speak to me again," I hissed, leaning into him. "And if you even think about touching my family, I will erase the your name from history before the sun rises. Consider this your final warning."
Clyde, trembling with humiliated rage, snapped. "Grab her! I don't care who she is—get her out of here!"
Two massive bodyguards lunged. The first reached for my throat, but the Mariano blood in me surged. I didn't flinch. I stepped into his space, grabbed his reaching arm, and used his own momentum to slam him face-first into the mahogany stage. The sound of his skull hitting the wood echoed like a gunshot.
As the second guard moved to strike me from behind, a shadow moved faster than a predator. Keifer appeared from the darkness, his hand catching the guard's fist mid-air. With a sickening crack, he twisted the man's arm and sent him crashing to the marble floor in a heap of broken bone.
We stood back-to-back—the Power Couple of the new era.
"Touch her again," Keifer growled, his voice a low, murderous vibration that made even the chandeliers tremble. "And I will not kill you.. I will erase the very memory of your existence. Every cent you have, every brick you own—I will burn it to the ground to keep her path clear."
"I told you once," Keifer's voice dropped into a register that made the glass on the tables hum. He didn't look at the fallen guards; his eyes were fixed on Keizer and Clyde, glowing with a predatory, lethal heat. "I gave you a warning to stay away from her. I told you that she was off-limits. But you chose to treat my word like a suggestion."
He stepped over the unconscious guard, his hand never leaving the small of my back, pulling me possessively against his side. The silence in the ballroom was so thick it felt like it was choking the guests.
"You think this is a family dispute?" Keifer hissed, his gaze sweeping over every relative in the front row. "It's not. It's an execution. Since you've proven you can't handle the privilege of the Watson name without using it to target my Queen, I am making a change."
He pulled a thin, black tablet from his inner pocket and tapped a single command. Across the gala's massive digital displays, the personal bank accounts and offshore holdings of Keizer and Clyde began to plummet in real-time, the numbers turning a violent, bleeding red.
"As of this moment," Keifer announced, his voice echoing like a death knell through the speakers, "Clyde Watson is no longer the CEO of Watson Enterprises. His contract is terminated for gross misconduct and the endangerment of the company's primary shareholder—me."
Clyde's face went from a sickly purple to a ghostly white. He began to stammer, but Keifer didn't stop.
"And you, Keizer," Keifer turned his glacial gaze to his father. "You are no longer a shareholder. I have activated the 'Moral Turpitude' clause in our bylaws. Your shares have been liquidated and transferred into a blind trust for the Mariano family's charitable foundations. From this second on, your signatures have the legal value of toilet paper."
A collective gasp of terror rippled through the gala. To these men, losing their titles and shares was a fate worse than death. They weren't just being fired; they were being erased.
"You are lower than the workers who clean these floors," Keifer hissed, leaning into his father's terrified face. "You will not have an office. You will not have a driver. You are lucky that I allow you to keep your names."
My fist connected squarely with his jaw with a sickening crunch that echoed through the silent hall.
Clyde's head snapped back. A spray of crimson erupted from his mouth, staining the white marble as he collapsed to his knees, clutching his face in raw, guttural agony. The elite guests recoiled in collective terror, watching as the "charity case" stood over the fallen heir like a goddess of war.
I didn't stop. I grabbed him by the collar of his ruined suit, forcing him to look at me through his own blood. "You called me a tool? You called me useless?" I whispered, my eyes shimmering with a predatory light. "Look at you now. You're bleeding on the floor of a house you no longer own, at the feet of a woman you couldn't even touch.
"Did you feel that, Clyde?" Keifer's voice was a low, murderous vibration. "That's the Mariano blood. And if you ever lift a hand toward me—or her—again, I won't just let her punch you. I'll let her erase you."
"You are doing all this for a girl ",Keizer said"She just a stray".
"You call me a stray, Keizer?" I laughed, a cold, melodic sound that sent a shiver through the room. I stepped onto the dais, closing the distance until I was inches from his face. "You seem to have forgotten the debts you accrued in the shadows. You think you buried your past deep enough? You think the blood on your hands just washed away with age?"
I leaned in, my voice a jagged whisper that the microphone caught and amplified like a death knell. "Keizer, I've seen the ledgers you thought were burned. I know the names of the people you stepped on to build this pedestal. You think I'm a child? I am the consequence you never saw coming. Your past didn't stay buried—it waited for me to dig it up."
The moment my words about his secret debts and the blood on his hands cut through the air, Keizer Watson didn't just flinch—he crumbled
The Grand Watson Ballroom, once a sanctuary of untouchable arrogance, had become a slaughterhouse of reputations.
"The gala is over," Keifer stated, his voice final. "Security, escort these commoners out of my building."
The guests fled in a state of pure panic, leaving us alone in the center of the silent, ruined ballroom. Keifer turned to me, his eyes softening only for me, though the raw possessiveness remained.
I turned to Alex ,"I don't want any of these things to get out of this Gala I'm sure you know what to do"