I Was His Wife, Then His Widow, Then No One's But My Own novel Chapter 58

The door clicked shut.

Silence returned to the dimly lit room, stretching the shadows across the floor.

Xander's eyes turned icy. Pulling out his phone, he dialed his assistant.

"The Vance Institute is completely cut off from the funding tonight."

His assistant was clearly stunned. "Why? Weren't you planning on thoroughly evaluating the Vance Institute? Plus, we just recently invested..."

Xander's voice dropped to a lethal timber. "Are you the boss, or am I?"

The line went dead silent. "Understood. I'll take care of it immediately."

Hanging up, Xander rested the phone on his knee and traced the rim of his champagne glass. A dark, predatory smirk played on his lips.

Let's see what kind of game Nora tries to play now.

The hallway was deathly quiet. Nora stepped out of the lounge, the hem of her dark green dress swishing softly around her ankles.

She let out a heavy breath, but the suffocating weight in her chest refused to budge.

Rounding the corner, she nearly collided with someone rushing in her direction.

Felix slammed on the brakes the moment he saw her, his brow furrowed in panic. "I heard there was an altercation earlier, and my mind went straight to you."

His eyes zeroed in on her new dress, his face darkening instantly. "Why did you change your clothes? Were you the one involved in that fight?"

He paused, his tone turning dangerous. "Please don't tell me it was Finn."

Nora offered a reassuring smile. "It's fine, Felix. It's all handled."

"Handled?" Felix was practically radiating fury. "Did they ruin your dress? Why else would you be wearing a different one?"

Nora didn't want to give him the details. She knew Felix's temper—if he found out, he would blow the whole thing up, and it simply wasn't worth wasting energy on Finn and Seraphina when they still hadn't accomplished their main goal for the night.

But Felix clearly wasn't going to let it go. He grabbed her hand. "Come on. We're finding them."

Nora swiftly grabbed his wrist. "Stop, Felix. Don't forget why we're really here tonight. It's not worth fighting with irrelevant people and wasting our own time."

Felix's brow remained tightly knit, his eyes swimming with a mix of heartache and profound frustration. "Why do you always do this to yourself?"

His voice dropped to a low growl. "If Finn made you suffer, I'm going to make him pay tenfold."

There wasn't a single trace of humiliation on her face; she looked remarkably composed, almost alarmingly serene.

Seraphina pressed her lips into a tight, unhappy line.

Standing next to Nora, Felix leaned in and lowered his voice. "Xander's people just found me. They said the funding allocation is officially 'under review.'"

Nora froze. "What does 'under review' mean?"

"It means we're not getting it," Felix said, looking grim. "I have no idea what went wrong. We practically had it in the bag."

Nora immediately thought of Xander sitting in that dark lounge with those unfathomable eyes, and realization hit her like a freight train. She was the problem.

She had sat next to him and spoken nothing but the unvarnished truth, but through his cynical lens, it had probably come across as a highly calculated manipulation tactic. The more she acted like she didn't care, the more convinced he became that she was playing him.

Looking down at the shimmering fabric of her dress, Nora let out a quiet sigh.

"It's okay, Felix. We'll figure something else out."

Felix opened his mouth to reply, but the lights at the front of the ballroom suddenly dimmed.