1RomanceEB Chapter 328 - 162: Dance
Chapter 328 - 162: Dance
For the next two hours, Leo was like a piece of furniture in the grand hall.
He sat on a high-backed sofa, an invisible barrier surrounding him.
The finely dressed guests walked past him, their gazes sliding away the moment they made contact.
He was perfectly isolated.
Leo didn’t feel awkward. He simply watched in silence.
He watched Evelyn Saint Cloud move through the crowd like a queen. She hosted the auction and announced where the donations would go. Her calm command of the room and her unspoken authority made the entire hall revolve around her rhythm.
He saw politicians, who were usually so arrogant on television, now bowing their heads respectfully to listen to her. He saw financiers, who held sway over all of Pennsylvania, now scrambling to raise their paddles for her charity projects.
It was a form of silent dominion.
This sense of superiority, built from money and bloodlines, permeated the air and made it hard for Leo to breathe.
Sitting here was no easier than facing off against Morganfield at a negotiation table thick with the smell of gunpowder.
The suffocating feeling of being excluded from the inner circle was more unbearable than any direct attack.
’But I have to adapt.’
Because this was the other side of power.
If what he saw on the streets of Pittsburgh was the muscle of power, then here, he was seeing its skeleton.
And if he didn’t understand how that skeleton was connected, he would never be able to truly control the colossal body.
「Time was about up.」
Leo placed his empty champagne flute on a passing waiter’s tray and walked toward a set of glass French doors on the side of the hall.
He pushed the door open, and a cold wind rushed into his collar.
It was a semi-open terrace, a smoking lounge.
Massive stone pillars supported a vaulted ceiling. Below lay a private garden shrouded in darkness, with only a few dim wall sconces casting a faint halo of light.
No one was there.
The respectable guests were all inside the warm hall, busy exchanging business cards and fake smiles.
Leo walked to the stone balustrade and took a deep breath of the cold air.
The sharp sting in his lungs sobered him, and it also dissipated much of the stifling feeling that had built up inside the hall.
CLICK.
The crisp sound of a lighter came from behind him.
Leo turned around.
Evelyn Saint Cloud was standing in the shadows.
She held a long, slender ladies’ cigarette, its red ember glowing and fading in the dark.
She was still wearing that minimalist black evening gown, but in the dim light, she seemed to merge with the night itself.
She took a drag from her cigarette, her movements elegant and unhurried.
She slowly exhaled, the smoke blurring her delicate yet cold face.
"Leo Wallace."
Evelyn spoke.
Her voice was even colder than when she had rejected that fat banker earlier, but with less weariness and more scrutiny.
"The barbarian who beat Aston Monroe by stealing votes."
Leo stood his ground, showing no sign of subservience despite her status.
"I won by the law, Miss Saint Claude."
Leo looked at her.
"If you invited me here just to insult me to my face, then you’ve succeeded. But I would have thought the Sect Leader of the Saint Claude Family valued her time more than this."
Evelyn looked at Leo.
She stepped out of the shadows, her high heels clicking on the marble floor.
She walked up to Leo until they were less than three feet apart.
"No."
Evelyn flicked her ash.
"I invited you here because I was surprised."
"Aston Monroe, the golden boy cherished by Philadelphia’s elite circle, mobilized the entire state’s administrative resources, yet he ended up losing to a few thousand scraps of paper in your hands that should have been voided."
A glint flashed in Evelyn’s eyes.
"I’m not interested in justice, nor am I interested in procedure."
"But I am very interested in efficiency."
"Using the smallest cost to move the largest lever and achieve an impossible goal. In business, that’s called a miracle. In politics, it’s called finesse."
"You’ve shown me a kind of brutal vitality I haven’t seen in a long time."
Leo shrugged.
"Thanks for the compliment. But if you just wanted to praise me, you could have sent an email."
"Of course I didn’t seek you out for idle chat."
Evelyn stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the balustrade.
She turned, leaning her back against the railing, and gazed at the mingling crowds in the ballroom.
"Your ’regional closed-loop credit system’—how’s the design coming along?"
Leo’s pupils contracted sharply.
’This is top secret.’
The idea of establishing an independent settlement system between the seven industrial cities and issuing "Alliance Credit Notes" was still confined to that five-star hotel conference room.
Only he, Ethan, and the few economists and lawyers who had signed non-disclosure agreements knew about it.
’How did Evelyn Saint Cloud know?’
"Don’t be so tense."
Evelyn seemed to see right through Leo’s wariness.
"The Saint Claude Family has been operating in Pennsylvania for two hundred years. Of those professors you found from the Wharton School of Business, two are consultants for my foundation."
Leo quickly regained his composure.
’Since she’d already shown her hand, being cagey now would just seem petty.’
"Since you already know, then you must also know that the system is still in the design phase."
Leo admitted it openly.
"The general direction has been set, and the logic is sound, but we have run into some trouble at the implementation level."