Stained

For a second, the entire room seemed to freeze. But the ruthless whispers of the guests cut through.

"Who is she?"

"Can't you tell? She looks like a kid from a lower class,"

"Did someone bring a charity case?"

"Is she drunk or just desperate for attention?"

The guests exchanged amused chuckles, their disdainful gazes fixed on Selina's hunched figure on the floor.

The girls continued to laugh mockingly behind Selina which caused tears welled in her eyes, blazing with indignation.

Selina grasped her dress, her fingers clutching it tightly like a soothing source to calm the humiliating air threatening to swallow her. Tears threatened to spill, but she refused to fall, not even a drop of it.

She wouldn't allow herself to look weak, like a plaything under their disdainful scrutiny. She wouldn't give them that pleasure.

Just then, Selina heard her father calling her name urgently.

"Selina!" Hudson called out.

Selina lifted her gaze and saw him storming in her direction, with Leah and Clarissa trailing behind.

When Hudson drew closer, he knelt beside his daughter and wrapped a hand across her shoulder, helping her to her feet.

"What happened? How did you end up in this state?" Hudson asked, his voice dripping with concern as his eyes scanned her body for a bruise. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that she was unharmed.

Selina locked her furious gaze on the girls. Their expressions had now turned neutral, as if clueless about the humiliation they had just put her through.

"They were angry because a lowly person like me attended the party. They pushed me," she answered, fury shooting through Hudson's calm demeanor, boiling deep in his veins.

The girls straightened their expressions into something serious.

"What do you mean, we pushed you? She's lying!" the middle girl retorted, glaring at Selina as if that would make her swallow back her resolve.

Hudson's expression changed in an instant as he scowled at the girls. "What is wrong with you?" he barked. "Were you raised this way? Apologize to her!"

"What?" the girls exclaimed in unison.

"We won't apologize to her. We did nothing wrong," the middle girl said defiantly.

"Don't accuse us when you weren't even here!"

"Is there proof we pushed her?" another added.

"After all she doesn't belong here," the middle girl mumbled.

Hudson raised a finger at them. "You little brats...!" he trailed off, holding back his rage as he clenched his fist. "I will make you pay for humiliating my dau—"

"Hudson!" Leah quickly interrupted, stopping him from proclaiming Selina as his child. "You can't act and speak recklessly in public."

She wouldn't let that happen, no matter what, not even a slip of the tongue out of anger.

Leah swept her gaze across the room, noticing the guests now casting curious glances about Hudson's connection to the girl. Everyone knew Hudson to be calm and reserved. No one had seen him this furious before over something.

"I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. Girls will be girls. Maybe someone bumped into another, which caused the accident," Leah said coldly, attempting to change the atmosphere.

Seeing Leah on their side, the girls nodded in agreement.

"You're right, ma'am. We barely touched her."

"She slipped."

Leah held her head high, shifting a grim expression toward Selina. "Must you always overreact to everything? You must learn to get along with people and not to cause them trouble with your clumsiness."

"Mother, Selina isn't clumsy, and neither is she a liar," Clarissa snapped, locking an angry gaze onto the girls. "This girl must have done it on purpose to humiliate her."

The girls frowned, glaring back at Clarissa.

Leah gave a silly little laugh. "No one will be interested in humiliating Selina because she has no face to save publicly."

Leah's words stabbed Selina's dignity more than the push.

"No matter what, Selina deserves an apology!" Hudson insisted, ignoring Leah's words.

The guests and girls frowned at Hudson's stubbornness and protectiveness toward Selina, as they believed he was unrelated to her. They wondered what kind of connection he had with her.

"Why are you so furious about something that shouldn't be your concern, mister?"

"Who is she to you?"

"He has no relationship with them," Leah answered quickly, before Clarissa or Hudson could speak. "You girls should leave," she dismissed them.

Just as the girls turned to leave with a satisfying smile lingering on their lips, a familiar calm yet chilly voice with an air of authority resonated across the room.

"Stop there."

The girls instantly froze in their tracks.

Everyone turned to see Zane approaching the scene purposefully, two men trailing behind him.

Zane drew closer, meeting Selina's indignant eyes. He could see her gray eyes filled with unspoken, buried emotions. Once, she had likely endured in silence.

He looked away, letting his icy gaze settle on the girls.

"Do what you were supposed to say," he said in his usual indifferent tone.

"Mr. Zane, we can only apologize if we were the ones who pushed her," the middle girl answered.

Zane lifted his hand, revealing a CCTV footage from his phone before the girls.

"Were you girls just having casual fun? Perhaps you did intentionally push her?" he asked coldly.

"Why would they push her?"

"They look so innocent. But that look is only masking their mischievous hearts!" murmured some guests.

The crowd's tone quickly shifted as they hurled condescending remarks at the girls.

A wave of embarrassment cut through their pride, and the girls scrambled to save face in the sudden turn of events.

"We didn't mean to push her. We thought she stole someone's card and got in to steal something else."

"We don't want things to go missing, and we thought sending her away would be the best option."

"But she was being stubborn, and we got into an argument."

"That's the whole incident."

Selina rolled her eyes at their twisted lies, tightening her fists.

Zane wasn't interested in their vague story because his eyes had never left Selina the entire time, even when he had been with his business colleagues. He had seen what happened and requested a CCTV footage sent to him rather than let it pass without the proper thing.

With his icy eyes fixed on the girls as they now shivered beneath his gaze and nearly regretted being caught, Zane commanded,

"You have no audacity to humiliate my guests, regardless of their socioeconomic status. I don't want this to repeat in the future. Do you understand?"

"Yes," the girls murmured, their voices quivering.

They turned to leave with fury burning inside them, but Zane's commanding voice halted them once more.

"Apologize."

The girls wanted to retaliate, but none of them dared defy him. He was a man cloaked in mystery and known for ruthless business dealings. They couldn't afford to provoke him.

The girls turned to face Selina. "I… I'm sorry," they apologized together, their voices betraying the insincerity of their words.

"Are you content with that?" Zane asked, fixing his gaze on Selina.

"Yes," Selina muttered. She didn't care about their apology, but society's views still hurt her.

Deep down, she knew incidents like this would continue to happen as long as she lacked a prestigious identity; without that, she wouldn't earn the respect and validation from high society.

"Send them out," Zane commanded the two security men behind him as he glanced at the shattered glasses on the floor. "They can only leave after paying for the damages."

"Yes, sir," one of the security guards replied with a slight bow, and approached the girls.

The guards grabbed the girls by their arms and dragged them out of the room.

"Don't drag me away like I'm some sort of criminal!" the middle girl barked at the security man, who continued to pull her along.

"Don't push me! I can walk myself out!"

Zane's intervention had left everyone speechless by how he had handled the situation. They wondered how lucky this seemingly lowly girl was to be connected with him.

The guests resumed their conversations as the air slowly returned to its previous exciting atmosphere.

Selina lowered her gaze to her white dress, noticing stains from the wine she had soaked on earlier. She needed to get it cleaned as she turned to leave the room.

While Zane took a slow sip of his wine, his frosty gaze fixated on Selina's retreating figure. Not that he cared about her, but he understood that feeling of being humiliated in an unfamiliar place.

A stain that can linger for a long time and is difficult to get rid of.

When Zane sensed Damien's presence behind him, he turned his gaze away from her and issued a low command. "Make sure she doesn't leave without seeing me. Bring her and Hudson to the location."

"Yes, sir," Damien replied, his tone steady as he acknowledged the order.