"You!" Sophia stood up with the help of her friends and glared at Elara with seething eyes.
Elara, however, remained unfazed, flexing her fingers as if she were just in some kind of stretching phase of a battle that was about to happen.
"Did it hurt?" Elara asked casually, her eyes betraying the concern in her voice.
"How dare you lift your hand on me?! Do you think I’ll let it go? I’ll tell Andrew everything, and then you’ll see—" Sophia started screeching in her cacophonic voice, and Elara smiled.
"It must’ve hurt. Maybe this will remind you not to lift your hands on others if you can’t bear the consequences." Elara looked at her nails lazily before looking up.
"I put up with your shit for so many years because you were family, but I am only human after all. So don’t blame me for the consequences of your actions. Dare to raise your hand on me one more time, and I’ll show you exactly how to be an elder." Elara’s words were composed, her gaze steady, and her posture straight, but it was something about her eyes that screamed danger.
And in that moment, for a second, Sophia felt tongue-tied, unsure what to say or do.
She had never been humiliated like this, not in her entire life. And to say this girl dared to slap her before her friends.
All she could see was red.
"Throw this girl out of this showroom this instant if you don’t want to face the wrath of Lloyds," Sophia gritted out, her gaze flickering to the sales assistant, who looked between them with complicated emotions.
Elara knew this would come sooner or later, and she walked to the counter before opening her thrift bag casually.
"This should tell whether I can buy the stuff here or not." She placed the Black Diamond card.
She hadn’t thought of using this card today. She wanted to buy the dress with her hard-earned money, not with a card her family had given her.
But she didn’t want to lose to Sophia just because she was any less.
Elara looked at the sales assistant with clear eyes, who looked even more troubled now.
A Black Diamond card wasn’t something that came around regularly. It was one of the rarest cards and the third-most valuable in the nation.
But they couldn’t risk losing a client like Sophia either.
"Ma’am, we have one more branch on the second floor that contains the dresses you would like to see. How about I assist you there?" The sales assistant asked.
At the same time, Daniel, who had been watching the scene before him unfold with lazy eyes, a proud smile on his face under the mask when he saw Elara slapping Sophia, arched his brows when he heard what the sales assistant said to his wife.
He sighed and cracked the bones in his neck.
It was true that Elara asked him not to intervene in her revenge, but there was no way he was just going to stand there and watch his woman walk out just because some sales assistant wanted to side with Sophia.
He pulled out his phone and called Alen.
"Yes, sir. I am working on the reports back-to-back. I will definitely be able to give you something by midnight," Alen said.
The man was on the verge of crying because Daniel had decided to go on holiday to appease his wife, not before leaving a bunch of tasks on his plate.
"I am in a clothing store. It’s called Elegante. Who’s the owner of this store?" He asked.
Alen, who was vigorously typing on the laptop, paused and quickly opened a new tab to find out.
"Are you joking with me, sir?" Alen asked after seeing the owner’s name.
Daniel quirked his brows.
"What is that supposed to mean?" He asked.
Alen pinched the area between his brows.
"That’s a subsidiary of the fashion line under the Macros group. Currently, it’s under run by your aunt," Alen said.
Daniel raised his brows before looking around.
"What a lousy way of dealing with things," Daniel said before he ended the call and made a new call.
The woman on the other side, who was rushing around because they had to complete the final stage of their dress for the upcoming fashion week, stopped dead in her tracks when she received a call from that one man everyone in the family dreaded.
"Hello?" She swallowed hard, walking to the staircase to have some privacy, just in case she was about to get scolded.
"Where are you?" Daniel asked.
"I am at the company dealing with the designs of the latest—"
"Your store isn’t letting my wife shop in peace. Should I tear it to pieces?" Daniel cut her off mid-sentence, and the woman on the other side gasped loudly.
She wasn’t shocked that Daniel wanted to tear down a place because he didn’t like how they operated and inconvenienced him, but the fact that he said they would let his ’wife’ shop in peace was something she had never thought she would get to hear in this lifetime.
Her eyes immediately sparkled.
"You finally got yourself a girl?! Oh my god, I can’t believe this! Where is the store? Fuck... I am coming over." The woman screeched without a filter and ended the call.
Daniel furrowed his brows as he looked at his phone in confusion. His words were supposed to scare her. Why did she get so happy?
He shook his head. It was hard to understand how the minds of people in his household really worked.
"Why should I?" Elara asked with a smirk before clicking her fingers.
"Call your manager. They are not letting a future star shop in their store. What’s this shitty customer service? I have gained millions of followers with my singing. Should I complain to my fans?" Elara blinked innocently.
Sophia looked at the girl and wanted to do nothing more than pull her hair at this point.
What did she say? Gained millions of followers? All of those followers were supposed to be her daughter’s!!
"Why are you still standing still? Can you afford to go against the Lloyds in this city?" Sophia asked, challenging the sales assistant with the same authority.
"Please cooperate with us, miss. Both of you calm down, and we will find a middle way to—" The sales assistant couldn’t complete her sentence when the manager, who had been notified of the chaos, rushed to them.
Elara looked at the middle-aged lady, who immediately smiled politely at Sophia, and noticed Sophia’s smirk deepen.
She suppressed the urge to scoff, hardening her resolve even more.
"Now we will see how you won’t leave this place," Sophia grinned, and the ladies who accompanied her chuckled.
"Is that so? I really warned you that standing against me won’t do you any good. But you are so keen on ruining your family’s reputation," Elara asked before she pulled out her phone and placed it on the counter with a smirk.