PART 3 – The Man Who Shouldn’t Have Been There
The paramedics had just loaded Victor onto a stretcher when the main doors of the ballroom opened again.
A tall man in a dark suit stepped inside.
The entire room froze for the second time that night.
Because the man who just walked in looked exactly like Victor Langford — only twenty years younger.
Same sharp jaw. Same cold eyes. Same arrogant way of carrying himself.
Ethan went ghostly white beside me.
“Uncle Julian?” he whispered.
Victor’s younger brother — the one everyone said had died in a car accident fifteen years ago — was very much alive.
And he was walking straight toward me.
Julian stopped a few feet away, looked at Victor on the stretcher, then turned to me with a slow, dangerous smile.
“So,” he said, voice carrying across the silent ballroom, “you switched the glasses.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
I didn’t flinch.
“How did you know?” I asked.
Julian chuckled. “Because I taught him that trick. We used to use it on business partners who got too greedy. Looks like the student finally met his match.”
Ethan looked between us, completely lost. “What the hell is going on?”
Julian turned to his nephew.
“Your father has been poisoning people for twenty years to protect the family fortune. Business rivals. Old friends. Even your mother almost got a taste once when she wanted a divorce.”
He looked back at me.
“But you… you’re the first one who beat him at his own game.”
Victor, still conscious on the stretcher, tried to speak but only managed a weak groan.
Julian crouched beside his brother.
“You always were sloppy when it came to women,” he said coldly. “This one’s smarter than you thought.”
