Ethan slowly turned his head and looked straight at her.
There was no fury in his eyes, none of the disappointment Tiffany had braced herself for.
If anything, he looked almost too calm.
Her stomach dropped.
Instinctively, she let go of the arm she had been clutching.
“Tiffany,” Ethan said at last, his voice low and unhurried, “do you know who Nina’s adoptive father is?”
Tiffany froze for a second.
“Edmund Harlow…”
“Right.
And Edmund Harlow, the former perfume king of Uppergate.” Ethan lifted the bottle of liquid and gave it a small shake in front of her face.
“Nina started learning how to identify fragrance notes when she was three.
By thirteen, she could already make perfume on her own.
One bottle from her can sell for six figures.
And now you’re telling me she’d use industrial alcohol and some dirt-cheap essence to make this trash, something so bad it couldn’t even poison a dog, just to set you up?”
Tiffany’s face went white in an instant.
“Ethan, I…”
“This thing?” Ethan dropped the bottle back into the gift box with a dull thud.
“Forget Nina.
Even the bodyguards standing outside Fragrance Garden’s gate couldn’t make something this amateur.” He looked at her, calm as ever, and that calm somehow hurt more than rage.
“Tiffany, are you taking me for an idiot, or do you just think Nina is stupid?”
The restaurant went dead silent.
Tiffany opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
The script she had painstakingly set up, the expressions she had practiced all night, the lines she had rehearsed over and over, all of it shattered under his quiet gaze like cheap glass.
Masland was even worse.
Her face had gone the color of ash, her legs wobbling so badly she nearly dropped to her knees.
“Tiffany, don’t pull tricks like this again.” Ethan kept his voice very low, almost gentle, almost like he was trying to soothe her, but every word landed on her like a blade.
“No matter whether Nina comes back or not, the position of First Lady will still be yours.
Just focus on recovering and stop using the child as leverage.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
His leather shoes struck the marble floor with crisp, icy echoes, each step sounding colder than the last.
Tiffany sat frozen in her chair, her whole body turning cold.
She stared at Ethan’s unyielding back, at the way he didn’t even bother to turn around once.
Jealousy and hatred burned through her until her whole body felt tight with it.
Nina.
Always Nina.
What the hell had that bitch done to him?
What kind of spell had she fed him?
She, Tiffany, was the one who had grown up by his side.
She was the one who had already won over the entire Blackwell family.
So why, why was it that in his eyes, in his heart, there was only ever that wild girl who came out of an orphanage?
“Miss…” Masland crept closer, shaking so hard her voice almost split.
“What do we do now?
His Excellency the President, he…”
“Get out!”
Tiffany suddenly grabbed the glass off the dining table and slammed it to the floor with all her strength.
The glass exploded across the room, shards flying everywhere, just like the last scraps of reason inside her snapping apart.
She sucked in breath after breath, chest heaving.
Her perfectly manicured nails dug hard into her palm, leaving deep red crescent marks.
No way was she letting this go.
So Ethan wanted to shield Nina, huh?
Fine.
Then he could stop blaming her for getting ruthless.
Tiffany’s fingers trembled as she pulled out her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
The call was picked up after a single ring.
Warren’s steady, cold voice came through from the other end.
“Sweetheart, what happened?”
“Dad…” Tiffany lowered her voice, but the poison in it was impossible to miss, the kind of viciousness that came from having no road left but forward.
“That bitch Nina can’t be left alive.
Ethan is completely bewitched by her.
If this keeps going, forget the First Lady’s position—I won’t even have a place to stand in Platinum Palace.”
There was silence for a few seconds on the other end.
Then Warren let out a quiet laugh, one that meant nothing good.
“Why panic?
She’s just an orphan with no backing.
What’s she really gonna do?”
“She’s staying inside the F Country consular district now—even Ethan can’t get in.
Dad, that slut has people covering for her now.
If we don’t move fast, once she starts digging into the Harlow family, we’re done.
Totally done.”
Warren’s tone finally turned more serious.
“She’s going to investigate the Harlow family?”
“She definitely will!” Tiffany nearly shouted, her voice sharp and cracked with fury.
“The deaths of Edmund Harlow and his wife, Ambrose Harlow’s disappearance—she never let any of that go.
Before, she didn’t have the power to investigate.
Now she has a new backer.
Who knows what she’ll pull next?”
From the other side of the line came the crisp click of a lighter opening and closing.
Warren was probably lighting a cigarette.
“Got it.”
His voice came through the static, calm in a way that made the skin crawl.
“Sweetheart, just focus on taking care of the baby.
Leave the rest to Dad.
Back when Edmund Harlow was riding high, how many people did he offend?
The people who’d like to see his daughter dead could line up from Uppergate all the way to G Country.
That little thing…
she won’t stay alive much longer.”
Tiffany gripped the phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.
A crazed, venomous hate flickered in her eyes.
“Make it clean.
Don’t let Ethan notice anything.”
“Relax.” Warren chuckled softly.
“Since when have I ever left evidence behind?”
After the call ended, Tiffany slowly leaned back into the chair.
Her hand drifted to her lower belly, stroking it lightly, while a dark, eerie smile curled at the corner of her lips.
Nina, did she really think that with one Fragrance Garden and a few bodyguards, she could just sleep easy?
In Uppergate, when the Ashford family wanted someone dead, they never needed to do it themselves.
She lowered her gaze to the bottle of “poison perfume” on the floor, the one Ethan had seen through immediately.
The smile on her face twisted wider and wider, ugly as a nightmare.