“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clara said calmly.
“Don’t you lie to me,” Victoria hissed, her composure cracking. “You think you’re clever. You think you embarrassed me. Let me tell you what’s going to happen now. I have had my father’s legal team run a complete background check on you, Clara May Thompson. I know all about your failed career as a dust-sifting archivist. I know about your student loans. I know about the tiny, pathetic apartment you can barely afford. You are a nobody.” She leaned back, a cruel smirk on her lips. “By the time I am finished with you, you won’t even be able to get a job washing dishes. I will personally call every potential employer. I will tell them you are a thief, a blackmailer, an unstable, vindictive little insect. I will sue you for slander. I will bury you in legal fees until you are begging for mercy. I will destroy every corner of your miserable life. Do you understand me?”
Clara listened to the litany of threats without flinching. This was the dragon’s fire, the final desperate attempt to incinerate the threat. But Clara was not afraid of the fire anymore, because she knew what the dragon was made of. She leaned forward slightly, matching Victoria’s posture.
“You’re right about one thing,” Clara said, her voice soft but carrying an unmistakable edge of steel. “I am an archivist. And I am very, very good at my job. I know you’re not Victoria Sterling from a Swiss boarding school. I know you’re Chastity Sterling from a dusty town in Nevada.”
Victoria’s face tightened, but she held her ground. “Lies and slander.”
“I know about the Silver State Sweethearts pageant,” Clara continued, her voice dropping even lower. “And I know about a boy who wrote you a poem. A boy whose family lost everything in a fire right after you humiliated him.”
At the mention of the fire, Victoria’s composure finally, completely shattered. The blood drained from her face, leaving her with a deathly pallor. This was a direct hit. This was not a vague reference to a pageant. This was the ghost summoned from the depths of her past and seated right at the table with them.
“I know about the barn, Chastity,” Clara said, the use of the old name a deliberate twist of the knife. “I know about the rumors. I know about the family that was driven out of town so your father could build his empire on their ashes.”
Victoria stared at her, speechless. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She looked not like a powerful billionaire’s daughter, but like the terrified girl from the past, her worst nightmare come to life.