Wade was greatly vexed, he came here to watch Stan Harrison’s destruction. He’d positioned himself for it, chosen his seat, prepared his commentary, practically written the post-mortem in his head.

And instead he was watching Vivian Reeves, Vivian Reeves, bow to the man he’d been mocking for the past five minutes.

Why? The question screamed through his brain like a siren. She has status. She has money. She has power. Why would she apologize to a nobody? What possible reason,

No answer came. The facts were right in front of him, stubborn and immovable, and they refused to rearrange themselves into anything that made sense.

Zack, meanwhile, had dropped his half-eaten meal onto the floor and hadn’t noticed. His mouth was open. His eyes were wide. He looked like a man who had just watched a cat politely order a coffee and sit down to read the newspaper.

"No way," he whispered.

Stan looked at Vivian with an expression of deliberate, unhurried calm.

"Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch it."

He’d heard her perfectly. Every syllable. He just wanted to hear it again.

Vivian’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the small, private cost of swallowing pride that tasted like broken glass, but she held her composure and repeated herself without hesitation.

"I said I’m sorry. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have caused you trouble, and I deeply regret how I treated you."

The words landed across the silent cafeteria like stones dropped into still water, each one sending ripples out to the far walls and back.

Wade’s expression had settled into something that resembled a man being forced to eat his own shoes.

Vivian reached into a sleek black bag at her side and produced a velvet box. She opened it, and the overhead lights caught what was inside, a watch, sitting on a bed of dark silk, gleaming with the quiet, unmistakable authority of extreme expense.

"This is for you," she said, holding it out. "As an apology."

The reaction from the crowd was instant and loud.

"Is that a Patek Philippe?"

"That watch is worth over a million dollars,"

"She’s just giving it to him? Like that?"

"I would sell both my kidneys for that watch and she’s handing it over as an apology gift?"

The envy in the room was so thick you could have ladled it into bowls. A million-dollar watch, presented publicly by the most powerful student at Peak University, to a man the entire campus had written off as a dead man walking.

The world had stopped making sense approximately four minutes ago, and it showed no signs of resuming.

Stan looked at the watch.

Then he looked at Vivian.

"Get that out of my sight."

The cafeteria collectively inhaled.

Wade’s mouth fell open so far his jaw nearly dislocated. A million-dollar Patek Philippe, rejected. Turned down. Dismissed like a flyer being handed out on a street corner.

If it had been Wade, if it had been anyone, they would have snatched that watch out of Vivian’s hands before she’d finished her sentence.

The idea of refusing a gift worth more than most people’s annual salary was so far outside normal human behavior that it registered less as a decision and more as a symptom.

He’s insane, Wade thought. He’s actually, clinically insane.

But a darker, more uncomfortable thought followed right behind it: He’s so rich that a million dollars genuinely doesn’t impress him.

Wade crushed that thought before it could fully form. It was too disturbing to entertain.

Vivian, to her credit, didn’t flinch at the rejection. She lowered the watch box slowly, her expression shifting into something more cautious, more searching.

"Is it, not enough?" she asked carefully. "Do you think it’s too cheap?"

"I don’t like it," Stan said flatly.

A pause. The cafeteria held its breath.

"I’ll consider forgiving you," he continued, his voice carrying just enough edge to make the conditional nature of the statement perfectly clear. "Come make yourself useful tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes."

The phrasing landed in the room like a small grenade.

"Make yourself useful." Coming from any other man to any other woman, the words would have been unremarkable.

But coming from Stan Harrison to Vivian Reeves, in public, after she’d just apologized and been rejected, the phrase carried a charge that sent every imagination in the cafeteria spinning in the same direction.

Vivian’s cheeks flushed pink.

Make myself useful. He wants me to, does he mean,

She looked at him again. The sharp jawline. The composed bearing. The quiet, unshakable confidence of a man who owned thirty percent of her company and had just turned down a million-dollar watch without blinking.

He was handsome. He was powerful. And he was, at this exact moment, the only person in her professional universe who could save her career.

A thought drifted through her mind, inappropriate, unbidden, surprisingly warm, and she felt her blush deepen by two full shades before she could suppress it.

Stop it. Focus.

[Vivian Reeves: Favorability −5]

[Vivian Reeves: Favorability 10]

[Vivian Reeves: Favorability 20]

Stan caught the numbers climbing in his peripheral vision and raised one eyebrow very slightly.

Her favorability just jumped thirty-five points. Is it what I said?

Does she have a weird kink that makes her like vague words like that,

He genuinely had no idea that the phrase "make yourself useful" had sent Vivian’s thoughts careening into territory that had nothing to do with company management and everything to do with the fact that she was standing three feet from a man who could end her career or change her life, and her brain had apparently decided to consider both options simultaneously.

From the sidelines, Wade Hollis, who lacked Stan’s supernatural insight but possessed a perfectly functional set of social instincts, saw through the exchange instantly.

"Shameless," he hissed, loud enough for the nearby tables to hear. "He refused the watch on purpose. The whole too cheap act is just a pretext to ask her out. He’s playing her."

He jabbed a finger in Stan’s direction and turned to Vivian.

"This guy has ulterior motives. Don’t agree to go anywhere with him. He’s manipulating you, it’s what he does. He did it to Sarah, he did it to Sophie, and now he’s doing to,"

Vivian didn’t reply but the glare she gave Wade made his mouth snap shut mid-syllable.