2: 2
2
The moment I said it.
The people who had been quietly eating pretended not to care, but every one of them stopped moving at the same time.
Ears pricked, all of them, terrified of missing a single word.
Everyone knew.
Five years ago, Maureen Fox destroyed my hand. I would never lift a scalpel again.
The youngest, most promising surgical genius, reduced to a cripple overnight.
These people, asking me, "So how have these five years treated you?"
It wasn't concern. It was the wish to watch a cripple wallow in his own ruin.
I lifted my glass, took a small sip, and gave a faint smile.
"Can't complain."
"Can't complain?"
Dylan Delgado let out an exaggerated burst of laughter, as if he'd just heard the joke of the century.
"Brendan Vance, who are you trying to fool?"
"Dressed like some beggar chief, and you've still got the nerve to say you can't complain?"
Dylan's eyes raked over me, top to bottom, full of contempt.
"Dylan!"
Maureen tugged at his arm, signaling him to stop.
But Dylan didn't rein it in. If anything, he got louder.
"Brendan, everyone here knows you're nothing but a cripple now."
"If things went badly for you, just say so. Nobody's going to laugh at you for it. Why puff yourself up and pretend?"
"Tell you what. Since you can't take a handout, my company happens to need a janitor to scrub the toilets. Just beg me, and I'll let you have the job. How's that?"
I looked at him, my face blank.
"No thanks."
His face went stiff mid-grin, humiliated in front of everyone.
"Give you a chance and you spit on it!"
"What, too good to scrub toilets?"
"You think you're still that medical prodigy everybody worshipped?"
"Let me spell it out for you. Fox Group is about to partner with Deepcloud Capital. When the tide comes in and everything rises with it, a piece of garbage like you won't even qualify to clean the toilets."
When he said Deepcloud Capital, Dylan's whole face turned smug and self-important.
"Deepcloud Capital?"
I frowned slightly.
Dylan misread the reaction completely.
"Country bumpkin. Never even heard of Deepcloud Capital."
He laughed, wildly overdone, looking at me the way you'd look at a heap of trash.
"Deepcloud Capital is the sword of Damocles hanging over the entire business world. Everyone else follows the rules. Deepcloud Capital is the one who writes them."
"Though I can't really blame you for being so ignorant. At your level, the only thing you'd ever get near these days is probably the scrap yard!"
The moment Dylan finished, the crowd broke into waves of laughter.
I watched them coldly, all of them laughing at me without a shred of restraint.
They didn't know.
Five years.
Long enough to drop a man from the clouds into the mud.
And long enough for a man to climb back out of it.
The Deepcloud Capital they kept talking about was mine. I built it.
And I had never received any word that Deepcloud Capital was partnering with the Foxs.
It wasn't that I looked down on them.
With Fox Group's size and pedigree, they probably didn't even qualify to partner with Deepcloud Capital.
But none of that was something I cared to explain to them.
Still, the ones who didn't know the truth, hearing that Fox Group was about to partner with Deepcloud Capital, raised their glasses to Dylan one after another.
It was "Executive Assistant Delgado" this and "Executive Assistant Delgado" that, every word dripping with flattery.
Dylan drank it all in, floating, his chin practically tipped toward the ceiling.
"See that, Brendan? That's the power of capital."
"A pauper like you can only roll around in the mud your whole life."
I gave a small, expressionless nod.
"Mm. I see it."
Dylan radiated superiority from every pore, so thick you couldn't pretend not to notice it.
Maybe my indifference struck some raw, fragile nerve.
The smugness on his face froze in an instant, replaced by the flush of a man humiliated at being ignored.
He slammed his palm down on the table, pitched his voice higher, and jabbed a finger toward my face, demanding through gritted teeth:
"Brendan Vance, what's that supposed to mean?"
"A broke piece of garbage like you dares look down on Deepcloud Capital?"
I lifted my eyes slowly, looked at him in his frantic, humiliated rage, and smiled.
"Has it occurred to you?"
"It's not Deepcloud Capital I look down on. It's you."
