Chapter 4

The entire hall fell dead silent for a heartbeat, followed by a wave of sharp screams.

Elsa’s face drained of color, and her knees buckled so violently her assistant had to lunge forward to keep her from hitting the floor.

Security and staff scrambled, dropping to their knees to retrieve the Heart of the Ocean from the hard marble.

Every collector and critic craned their necks, desperate to see if the priceless gem had survived the drop.

Meanwhile, Chloe, who had been basking in the spotlight on stage just seconds ago, was completely forgotten.

With trembling hands, Elsa held the stone under the spotlights, examining it over and over until tears welled in her eyes.

"There's a fracture."

Those four words sent a collective shudder through the entire room.

In high-end jewelry, an internal fracture was a death sentence.

For a flawless, historical sapphire of this caliber, the financial and historical loss was impossible to quantify!

Once the initial shock faded, Elsa’s fury erupted.

The glare she leveled at Chloe was murderous.

"Give me an explanation. Now!"

Any real designer knew that structural integrity was the absolute baseline of jewelry craftsmanship.

Aesthetics and concept meant nothing if the stone wasn't secure.

And Chloe was nothing more than an amateur who couldn't even manage the basics.

All the smug color had vanished from Chloe’s face. She stammered frantically, waving her hands.

"No... that's not right! I don't know what happened!"

"I followed the design draft down to the millimeter! I have no idea why the prongs gave out!"

Her excuses sounded laughably hollow against the hard reality on the floor.

Even Julian, who had spent the last month vouching for her brilliance, couldn't find a single word to bail her out.

Chloe kept shooting frantic glances my way, the venom and desperation in her eyes barely concealed.

I calmly took a slow sip of the red wine in my glass.

What was she going to do?

Stand up in front of the press and confess that she stole my blueprint?

That would be immediate professional suicide.

On top of that, the competition carried a substantial cash prize and a binding commercial contract. Admitting theft would give Elsa every legal ground to press felony fraud charges.

She didn't dare.

She had no choice but to choke down this poison herself.

I stepped forward, cutting through Julian’s useless, frantic attempts to soothe Elsa.

"Elsa, would you mind letting me take a look?"

Surrounded by absolute chaos, Elsa glanced up at me, her eyes heavy with bitter regret.

"Go ahead."

I took the Heart of the Ocean, inspecting the internal stress points against the light. Exactly as I expected.

"The internal stress fracture is quite severe," I murmured evenly. "It runs deep."

Hearing that, Elsa’s fury flared even hotter.

"I should have never trusted her! I want full, total restitution for this disaster!"

A multi-million-dollar loss. Chloe couldn't pay it off even if she sold every organ in her body.

Then again, she had Julian now.

Julian had quite a bit saved up in his investment portfolios. Hopefully, the newlyweds were ready to share the burden.

Elsa took a ragged breath, reigned in her rage, and signaled her legal team to initiate litigation right there in the VIP lounge.

Chloe panicked completely, dropping to her knees and grabbing Elsa’s skirt.

"I didn't mean for this to happen! Please, just give me another chance!"

"It's just a few million dollars—that's pocket change to someone like you! Can't you just let it go for the sake of an aspiring artist?"

The room stared in sheer disbelief.

Someone in the crowd couldn't hold back a scoff.

"Is she out of her mind?"

"How did nobody notice how utterly shameless she is?"

"Remember when she kept hinting that Sophia was bullying her out of jealousy? Looks like she was a backstabbing leech all along."

During her month of fame, Chloe had burned plenty of bridges with her arrogance.

Now that her mask had shattered, nobody held back their scorn.

Elsa looked down at her with pure disgust, as if she were staring at a cockroach.

With a flick of her hand, security hauled the sobbing Chloe off her feet and dragged her away.

Turning back to me, Elsa’s tone shifted into desperate pleading.

"Sophia... is there any way to salvage this? Anything at all?"

In our line of work, a flawed gem wasn't automatically trash.

A master craftsman with sufficient vision could incorporate the natural fracture lines into an entirely new, revolutionary concept.

But that demanded god-tier technical skill.

It required impeccable aesthetic genius combined with elite, proprietary cutting execution to ensure the stone didn't shatter along the fault lines during reshaping.

Meeting Elsa’s desperate gaze, I paused thoughtfully before offering a calm nod.

"I'll see what I can do."