The lobby fell silent.
He bent at once to snatch it up. The mont he turned it over and saw the shattered screen, a dark flicker of vexation crossed his face.
Then his gaze snapped to Cixi, who had just steadied herself and was brushing down her coat, checking whether anything had been ruined.
"You," the man barked. He looked to be in his fifties, dressed in an expensive suit that sat heavily on his broad fra. "Don’t you have eyes?
Cixi stared at him, stunned for a second by the sheer audacity of it. Then disbelief gave way to offence. She rolled her eyes at him, unamused. "Only if you had not been gawking at your phone while walking around as if the whole floor belonged to you," she shot back, her temper rising at once. "Your phone would have been spared."
The man’s eyes widened in shock.
"First you break my phone, and now you bla ?" the man snapped with wounded pride, his voice filling the lobby the way expensive cologne fills an elevator. "Do you even know who I am—"
"No," Cixi cut in sharply before he could finish. "I don’t know who you are. And I don’t care!"
For the first ti in her life, she had dressed carefully, hoping to get so information about Cassian without much struggle. And now she had been dismissed as if she were unimportant, which was not far from the truth.
This man, with his negligent attitude, had nearly ruined the coat Cassian had given her... and instead of admitting his mistake, he stood there barking as if she had wronged him.
The world really was full of n like him.
"And honestly," she continued, "I am not interested either. I don’t allow narcissistic douchebags into my orbit. I am severely allergic to them."
She then lifted her hand dramatically to her chest and scratched lightly at the back of her hand. "Look," she added with dry sarcasm, "the allergy has already started."
A few people nearby almost laughed and quickly suppressed it, so clearing their throats, so adjusting their collars, and so pretending to cough. After all, this was not a place where wealthy guests behaved like ordinary spectators.
Still, their eyes betrayed their amusent.
Across the lobby, a reporter who had been waiting to interview a visiting actor lowered her notebook slightly. Her interest shifted imdiately to the woman in the red coat and the man with the broken phone.
The man stepped forward, closing the distance between them, trying to use his size to intimidate Cixi.
She instantly stepped back. "O.M.G." She pressed her hand flat against her chest, her eyes widening with exaggerated alarm. "Are you trying to kill with this allergy? Stay away, you jerk!"
Even she did not understand where this boldness was coming from.
Perhaps because her patience had been eroding day by day.
Perhaps because she felt she had nothing left to lose. No job. No ho of her own.
What was anyone going to do—kill her?
She was immortal.
A few onlookers failed to control their laughter this ti. The sound slipped out before they could stop themselves. Then they quickly masked it again, but the damage had been done.
The man’s nostrils flared. His grip on the cracked phone trembled. He leaned towards Cixi and spoke in a voice so low that only she could hear it.
"To be hoist by one’s own petard."
The words landed low and quiet, ant only for her. A chill crept up the back of her neck despite the warmth of the coat.
The receptionist, who had been watching from behind the desk with mounting horror, stepped forward. She could no longer wait.
"I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience, Mr David Johnson." She bowed slightly, positioning herself between them. "The lady was leaving in a hurry and did not see you approaching. I am deeply sorry for the trouble."
Cixi’s mouth opened to fire back, but she caught the look on the receptionist’s face. The woman’s eyes were pleading, and Cixi understood that whatever she said next would put this woman in a difficult position.
So she swallowed her words.
Convincing herself that so battles were not worth dragging others into.
She turned to leave.
If only it had been that simple, because David Johnson was not finished yet.
"I will let the matter go," he said, loud enough for the lobby to hear, "only after she apologises to in front of everyone." His eyes were fixed on Cixi’s back. "On her knees."
Cixi stopped walking and pivoted to confront the maniac who thought far too highly of himself. In truth, she found him hollow.
His eyes locked onto her as though she were sothing that needed correction.
A lesson.
He disliked won like her. Won who did not lower their gaze in front of n. "What are you waiting for? Kneel!"
Realising that reasoning with him would be like arguing with a brick wall, she decided to leave and turned away. But David crossed the distance in two strides and seized her wrist.
His fingers clamped violently around it, grinding the small bones against one another. Pain exploded instantly, and her face twisted. She tried to pull free, but his grip tightened, his thumb pressing into the underside of her wrist until her pulse throbbed against his skin.
Cixi gasped as his grip tightened, and the slap ca before the thought.
Smack.
Her free hand swung upwards and connected with his face so hard that his head snapped to the side. The sound of her palm striking his face cracked through the lobby like a gunshot.
David Johnson’s ear rang. For three full seconds, his sense of sound dissolved into a high-pitched whine, and the world existed only as a throbbing heat spreading across his left cheek.
Shock spread through the lobby, and a few smirks appeared on several faces.
No one stepped forward to help Cixi.
Not one.
The receptionist tried again to intervene, but one dark glare from David froze her in place.
Even the hotel security team, two n in dark suits stationed near the corridor, remained exactly where they were.
No one wanted to be the first to step into sothing dangerous.
A quick ssage was already being sent upstairs to the Vice-President.
David Johnson was not just anyone.
He was a director in the Narcotics Unit, one of the most aggressive divisions in the police force. And his older brother was the Chief of National Security.
Every wealthy guest in that lobby knew him. And every one of them kept their distance. None of them wanted drugs to materialise on their property.
The staff looked at Cixi with quiet pity.
Even after the slap, David did not release her wrist. His grip had tightened since then, his knuckles white, the tendons in his forearm standing out like cables.
"You," he murmured dangerously, "you will wish you had never been born."
That sentence should have made Cixi recoil. It should have sent fear racing down her spine and made her knees weaken. Any normal person would have crumbled, but Cixi was no longer normal. She was a cursed immortal who witnessed death every night.
She leaned closer instead, close enough for her whisper to land directly against his ear. "You have no idea how often I have already wished that," she said quietly. "Do you have sothing more original?"
Sothing shifted behind David’s eyes.
The anger did not leave, but it moved aside, making room for sothing else. His brow furrowed. Wrinkles ford between his brows as he studied her face, truly studied it for the first ti since their collision.
She looked too untouched.
His eyes travelled across her face.
She looked too fresh and young.
Cixi twisted and swirled her wrist, trying to wrench free. But David’s grip changed. It was no longer fuelled by anger. His fingers loosened just slightly, adjusting as though he had found sothing he wanted to hold rather than crush.
Then his expression changed completely with recognition.
"You." A dark smile spread across his face. "You are the girl from that video."
David’s gaze travelled from her face down to her hair. The golden strands that fell past her shoulders, catching the light.
’Golden blond,’ he mused, his eyes sparkling with malicious plans.
This ti, Cixi recoiled. Her eyes widened in dread. Her stomach dropped. Fear rushed into her chest like ice water.
A horrible realisation struck her.
If he recognised her...
How many others had seen it too?
"W-what are you talking about?" she stamred, panic breaking through her composure. She tried again to pull free. "Leave my hand!" she shouted at him and looked around for help.
The staff lowered their eyes.
So even pretended not to see.
Others watched openly, but no one ca for help... Ofcourse, no one would step forward.
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