CEO Calls The Waitress A Liar About Speaking 9 Languages — Until Three Words Leave Him Silent
Chapter 3
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The insult was designed to sting, to remind her of her place. She felt a familiar heat rise in her chest, the anger she had to swallow daily. But tonight, with Leo's bills weighing on her and exhaustion fraying her nerves, the practiced deference cracked just a little."Actually," she said, her voice quiet but clear, "I'm fluent in nine languages."The statement dropped into the conversation like a stone in a silent pond. The beefy man choked on his water. Thorne stared at her, his mouth agape, then burst into a loud, braying laugh."Nine languages! That's a good one, honey. I've got Ivy League VPs who can't master a second language, and you're telling us you've got nine? What are you, some kind of secret agent?"The humiliation was a physical force pressing down on her. She could feel the eyes of nearby tables turning toward them. Her gaze flickered to Julian Sterling. He was watching her, his expression unreadable, but a faint, cynical curl touched his lips. He believed Thorne. Of course he did. To him, she was just part of the scenery, and the scenery wasn't supposed to have hidden depths."It's not a claim, sir. It's a fact," she said, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly.It was Sterling who spoke then, his voice low and laced with steel: "Nine is a very specific number. Name them."It felt like an interrogation."English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese."Thorne snorted. "Right. And I'm the King of England. It's pathetic, really—memorizing a few phrases from a travel app to try and get a bigger tip.""That's enough, Richard," Sterling said, though there was no real heat in it. He turned his full attention to Elara, and the force of his focus was unnerving. "You're making an extraordinary claim. You must understand why it invites skepticism.""I understand that people's perceptions are often limited by their expectations," she replied, her chin lifting slightly.Sterling's eyes narrowed. The cynical curl of his lip deepened into a full-blown smirk. It was a look of utter dismissal, the look of a man who had judged and sentenced her in a single glance."No," he said, his voice dropping to a confidential, cutting tone that was worse than Thorne's shouting. "I think you're a liar."The word, so bold and direct, struck her with the force of a slap.