Chapter 2 - The Table of MisfitsThe silence in the ballroom was so heavy you could hear Great-Aunt Beatrice snoring gently from the corner of her folding chair.
Shorrrk... phew.
Emmett Stewart didn't care. He walked with long, purposeful strides, his expensive leather shoes clicking rhythmically against the polished hardwood floor. The murmurs started instantly—low, confused whispers rippling through the crowd of business executives and high-society snobs.
“What is he doing?” “Is he lost?” “Why is he heading toward the back? That’s... that’s where the children are.”
Nicholas was practically jogging behind Emmett, his face contorted into a mask of pure panic. He looked like he was about to suffer a full-scale medical emergency.
“Mr. Stewart! Mr. Stewart, sir!” Nicholas hissed, trying to grab Emmett's elbow without actually touching him. “Wrong way! The head table is that way. The VIPs, the board members, the real investors—they’re all seated in the front center. That area back there is just... it’s just family overflow. It’s completely unimportant.”
Emmett stopped dead in his tracks.
He didn't turn around immediately. He stood there for a second, letting the tension build until it felt like a tightly wound spring. Then, slowly, he pivoted on his heel and looked down at my brother.
“Unimportant?” Emmett’s voice cut through the ambient noise of the room, clear and carrying effortlessly. “Mr. Vance, in my line of work, I’ve learned a very valuable lesson. If you want to find the structural integrity of a building, you don't look at the expensive paint on the walls or the decorative chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. You look at the foundation. And right now?” Emmett swept a hand outward, gesturing toward the back corner of the room. “Your foundation looks completely neglected.”
Nicholas swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. “I—I assure you, sir, everything here is top-tier. My bride's family—the Vanderbilts of local real estate—we ensured absolute perfection—”
“Perfection?” Emmett interrupted, his lip curling in mild disgust. He turned his back on Nicholas entirely, dismissing him with the finality of a closing vault door.
He took two more steps forward.
Right up to Table Nineteen.
Right up to me.
Parker looked up from his coloring book, blinking wide blue eyes at the towering billionaire. “Mister,” Parker said solemnly, holding out a green crayon, “can you draw a dragon with ice wings?”
To my absolute shock, Emmett Stewart—the man who routinely made grown venture capitalists cry in boardroom meetings—slenderly pulled out the heavy chair next to mine, the one intended for a toddler, and sat down.
He crossed one long leg over the other, resting his elbows on the sticky, plastic-covered tablecloth right next to a spilled cup of apple juice.
“Ice wings,” Emmett murmured, looking down at Parker with a ghost of an amusement playing at the corner of his mouth. “That sounds structurally unstable. Fire is much more efficient.”
Parker scrunched up his nose. “Fire melts the ice.”
“Precisely,” Emmett replied, before turning his gray eyes toward me.
The entire ballroom was staring at us now. Every single pair of eyes—my mother’s horrified stare, my father’s trembling jaw, Nicholas’s blood-drained face—was locked onto Table Nineteen.
Emmett ignored them all. He leaned in slightly toward me, lowering his voice just enough so only I could hear.
“You know, Jenna,” Emmett said smoothly, his tone shifting from cold corporate titan to warm, familiar collaborator, “if I had known your brother’s idea of a wedding reception was locking you in a playpen with toddlers and a snoring senior citizen, I would have sent a corporate helicopter to extract you an hour ago.”
I raised an eyebrow, picking up my apple juice box and taking a calm sip. “And miss out on the complimentary chicken nuggets, Mr. Stewart? Unthinkable.”
A low, rich chuckle rumbled in Emmett’s chest.
Across the room, Nicholas looked like he was about to burst into tears. He took a desperate step forward, his voice cracking slightly as he violated every rule of social decorum.
“M-Mr. Stewart... Emmett... I am so, so sorry. My sister... she doesn't belong here. She has some... cognitive quirks, you know? She likes to sit with children, she doesn't understand the scope of this event, she’s just... she’s a bit unhinged. We can have security escort her to a quiet room upstairs if she’s making you uncomfortable—”
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
Emmett slowly turned his head away from me. He looked at Nicholas. Not with anger, but with a terrifying, calculated stillness.
“Un-hin-ged?” Emmett repeated each syllable slowly, tasting the word like it tasted toxic. He stood up from the child-sized chair, towering over Nicholas. “Mr. Vance. Do you have any idea who is sitting at this table?”
Nicholas blinked rapidly, sweating through his custom silk shirt. “Uh... my sister. Just... my weird sister who writes blog posts.”
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“Your sister,” Emmett said, his voice rising just enough for the front rows to hear every single word, “is the reason your stock pitch last month didn't make you look like an illiterate third-grader. She is the reason my company just signed a multi-million-dollar advisory contract with an anonymous ghostwriter. And more importantly... she is the only reason you even managed to book this luxury estate in the first place.”
Nicholas’s jaw hit the floor. The color drained completely from his face, leaving him looking like a ghost in a tuxedo.
