Chapter 4: The Price of Privilege
Inside the ultra-exclusive VIP diamond suite of the Lotus Spa in downtown Manhattan, the air was thick with the faint, intoxicating aroma of eucalyptus and expensive, imported essential oils.
When I pushed the frosted glass door open and stepped inside, the scene was one of sickening indulgence. Eleanor was lying flat on a plush, heated massage bed, wrapped in a plush robe, while an esthetician carefully slathered a thick, twenty-four-karat gold anti-aging mask across her face.
Lexi sat sprawled on a velvet chaise lounge nearby. She was holding a thick stack of luxury spa receipts, sipping cucumber water, and laughing uproariously with Khloe, who was leaning back in an adjacent chair, cooling cucumber patches over her eyes, trying to hide the stress lines from yesterday’s disaster.
“Manager!” Lexi barked, waving a receipt without even looking up. “Add three more rounds of your most expensive, full-body anti-aging laser treatments to the tab. Just put it all on my wonderful sister-in-law’s Amex Black Card. Might as well max the damn thing out before the divorce is final!”
The spa manager, a sophisticated woman in a sleek black suit, stood awkwardly by the door. The moment she saw me enter, her posture snapped to attention. She bowed deeply, her eyes wide as if a savior had just descended from the heavens.
“Miss Sterling! You’re finally here. The Lawson ladies are…”
“Serena?!” Lexi bounded off the velvet sofa like she’d been shocked. Her face immediately darkened into a furious scowl when she realized it was me. “What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you cause enough chaos at the estate last night? Look at your hand, it’s a disgusting mess. How dare you show your ugly face in a high-class place like this?”
Eleanor roughly ripped the expensive gold mask off her face, ruining the treatment. She sat up with the esthetician’s panicked help, pulling a long, condemning face.
“As a daughter-in-law, you should be ashamed! Running around the city acting like a crazy person all day. Do you possess even a shred of respect for your elders?” Eleanor sneered, looking down her nose at me. She snapped her fingers at the staff. “Manager! Throw this woman out onto the street. Do not let her interrupt our family spa day for another second!”
I completely ignored their yapping. I simply walked over to the manager and extended my uninjured hand.
“Bring me their complete, unredacted spending records for the last three years. I want you to pull up the transaction history for every single credit card, supplementary card, and line of credit they are currently utilizing at this establishment.”
The manager didn’t dare hesitate for a fraction of a second. She immediately tapped on her iPad and handed the tablet over to me with a respectful nod.
Khloe slowly took off her eye patches. She stood up, trying to project elegance, adjusting her silk robe to show off her figure, and wore a mocking, pitying smile.
“Mrs. Lawson, why are you coming in here throwing such a pathetic, public fit?” Khloe sighed. “Eleanor and Lexi are simply enjoying themselves, spending the Lawson family’s money, which Mr. Lawson completely and explicitly authorized. Aren’t you vastly overstepping your boundaries by trying to audit them in public? You’re embarrassing yourself.”
I looked down at the tablet. The screen displayed a dizzying, endlessly scrolling list of exorbitant transactions. Diamond facials, caviar body wraps, imported champagne. The total summed up to several million dollars over the course of three years.
I let out a slow, cold laugh that made the temperature in the room plummet.
“Liam’s money?” I asked softly.
I looked up and locked eyes directly with Khloe.
“Seventy percent of the initial capital that built Vanguard Enterprises from the ground up came directly from my grandfather’s Sterling Family Trust. Every single person in the Lawson family, from the oldest hag to the youngest brat, swipes my inherited credit cards just to afford a decent pair of socks.”
I took a step closer to Khloe, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “Khloe, nobody in this city even knows for sure whose bastard child you are currently carrying in your stomach. Tell me, who gave a cheap secretary like you the absolute audacity to swipe my card today?”
Khloe’s face drained of color, turning a stark, sickly white. Realizing she was losing ground, she desperately pushed her stomach out slightly, placing a protective hand over it, and leaned smugly against my mother-in-law’s shoulder.
“Mother Lawson, listen to what she is saying!” Khloe cried out, her voice dripping with fake outrage. “She is actually questioning Mr. Lawson’s flesh and blood! She’s calling your grandson a bastard! Mr. Lawson handed this black card to me himself. He explicitly told me to spend as much as I want to keep the baby stress-free!”
Hearing this, Eleanor trembled with apocalyptic rage. She pointed a shaking finger right at my nose, spitting her words.
“Serena! You barren, useless woman! How dare you slander the pure bloodline of the Lawson family’s heir?! The Lotus Spa is a public business, open to anyone with money. And I, as the matriarch of the Lawson family, will spend whatever I damn well please here! It is none of your concern!”
“Ah, Mrs. Lawson. You might be missing a critical piece of information,” I announced calmly, handing the tablet back to the manager.
I smoothed my jacket and delivered the killing blow. “The primary, anonymous majority shareholder behind the entire Lotus Spa franchise is my mother. Which means, this building, this room, and the ground you are standing on… is my territory.”
Lexi and Eleanor froze simultaneously. The color rushed out of their faces, leaving them a sickly, terrified shade of green. They looked around the room, suddenly realizing they were deep behind enemy lines.
“Manager,” I crossed my arms, issuing a cold, absolute command. “Immediately and permanently freeze all supplementary cards held by these three individuals. Revoke their VIP memberships, effective this very second. Furthermore, bundle all their spending records from the past three years and hand them directly over to my legal department. We will be pursuing full financial restitution for unauthorized use of funds.”
“Serena, you wouldn’t dare!” Lexi shrieked like a banshee. She charged at me, her hands clawing the air, trying to physically snatch my designer bag to get to my phone. “What gives you the right to freeze my accounts?! Who the hell do you think you are?!”
Khloe sneered, stepping forward to back Lexi up. “Serena, stop being so arrogant and dramatic. If Mr. Lawson finds out you humiliated his mother in public like this, he will make absolutely sure you leave this divorce with nothing but crippling debt. You cannot freeze these accounts without his signature.”
Looking at the two twisted, hateful faces shoved aggressively into my personal space, I realized words had lost their utility.
I didn’t waste another breath. I raised my right arm swiftly, pivoting on my heel to generate maximum torque. Before Lexi could even register the movement, I delivered a brutal, ringing slap directly across her left cheek.
SMACK!
The crisp, wet sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed like a gunshot through the silent VIP suite.
Lexi was slapped so incredibly hard that her feet actually left the ground for a fraction of a second. She collapsed into the velvet sofa, clutching her rapidly swelling, crimson cheek, staring up at me with eyes wide in utter, paralyzed disbelief.
“You… you hit me?!” she gasped, tasting blood in her mouth.
“I hit exactly who I intended to hit,” I replied coolly.
Before the shock could settle, I spun around and backhanded another vicious, open-palmed slap right across Khloe’s face as she instinctively tried to intervene.
This strike carried immense, built-up frustration. Khloe let out a miserable, high-pitched scream. The force sent her crashing backward into a heavy laser aesthetic machine. Her surgically enhanced nose took the brunt of the impact against the metal casing. It instantly shifted off-center, and dark, thick blood began pouring freely from her nostrils, ruining her pristine silk robe.
“Serena! You lunatic! I am your elder!” Eleanor shrieked, totally losing her mind as she tried to blindly tackle me to the floor.
I dodged her clumsy, frail grasp with a swift side-step. I grabbed the collar of her robe, spun her around, and shoved her hard onto the chaise lounge next to Lexi.
For a full minute, the luxurious VIP suite echoed solely with the relentless sound of my sharp reprimands and the agonized, humiliating wailing of three women who finally realized they had pushed the wrong person too far.
“Manager, is the security team deaf?” I finally asked, pulling a wet wipe from the aesthetician’s tray. I meticulously wiped my slightly reddened palms, looking down calmly at the disheveled, weeping mess of women on the floor.
The manager instantly understood. With a sharp wave of her hand, four massive, highly trained security guards rushed into the room. They didn’t hesitate, roughly grabbing Lexi and Khloe by the arms and hauling them to their feet.
“Miss Sterling, how should we handle these… guests?” the manager asked, her tone dripping with professional disdain for the Lawsons. “Since their cards are officially frozen, they have absolutely no way to pay for today’s extensive treatments.”
I stared coldly at Khloe, whose perfectly styled hair was now a rat’s nest, her face smeared with her own blood. I looked at Lexi, whose expensive clothes were wrinkled and stained.
“Have security escort all three of them off the premises immediately,” I ordered. “The Lotus Spa does not serve low-class, fraudulent clients who attempt to dine and dash.”
“Serena! Just you wait! My brother will end you for this!” Lexi cursed hysterically, her heels dragging across the floor as she was physically hauled out the door.
Eleanor was so furious her face had turned a dangerous shade of purple. She couldn’t even form coherent words, clutching her chest and awkwardly shuffling out as the guards firmly shoved her along.
I walked to the window, watching impassively as the three “ladies of high society” were literally thrown out the front glass doors onto the busy, unforgiving downtown pavement in broad daylight. Pedestrians stopped to stare and point.
I picked up my phone and dialed the head of my legal team.
“Prepare to file a massive civil suit against the Lawson family on my behalf,” I commanded, my eyes fixed on the pathetic scene below. “I want every single penny of my personal assets they have illegally misappropriated over the past five years recovered. File the injunctions immediately.”
