She seated me with the help at her dinner party. Then the U.S. Senator asked for my protection—and……
Chapter 1: Sweet Humiliation
The Hamptons in late August possessed a haughty and luxurious beauty. Atlantic sea breezes rustled through the pine trees, stirring the lush green lawns of the Thorne mansion. Tonight was the tenth anniversary celebration of Madeline Thorne’s charity foundation – the “queen” of Manhattan’s high society.
I, Avery Cross, stepped out of my old taxi, feeling out of place amidst a sea of limousines and Ferraris. I wore a simple black dress, no jewelry, no elaborate makeup. Madeline was my best friend from college, but after my family went bankrupt and I disappeared from high society ten years ago, that relationship had become something very different.
“Avery! You’re here,” Madeline approached, wearing a dazzling Versace silk dress. She hugged me, but her eyes swept over my simple attire with undisguised contempt. “I’m sorry, the official guest list is already full. But since you’re an old friend, I’ve arranged a special seat for you.”
She led me down the opulent hallway, past the grand ballroom where governors and CEOs were raising their glasses, and stopped at the industrial kitchen area behind. There, a small wooden table sat beside the sink. Two servants and an electrician were seated there.
“Sit here. The servants’ food is delicious,” Madeline smirked, a triumphant smile on her face. “Unlike your safe, insignificant office job, here you’ll see how the real world works.”
I remained silent. I didn’t argue, I didn’t get angry. I simply sat down on the wooden chair. The electrician looked at me with concern, but I just smiled and began to enjoy my cheap sandwich.
Chapter 2: The Silent Ones in the Shadows
The party outside grew increasingly boisterous. The soft jazz music and the laughter of America’s most powerful men echoed through the kitchen. Madeline didn’t know that sitting at the maid’s table was the perfect vantage point.
From here, I could see the bodyguards’ anxiety, the waiters’ furtive eavesdropping, and most importantly, the cracks in the guests’ impeccable facade.
“You don’t look like an office worker,” the electrician whispered to me.
“I’m just an observer,” I replied softly, my hand glancing at the old watch on my wrist.
My silence over the past ten years had taught me a lesson: The most powerful person in the room is never the loudest. Madeline thought she was insulting me, but in reality, she had just given me the key to entering the “machinery” of this house without arousing suspicion.
Chapter 3: The Climax – When the Senator Cries for Help
Around 10 p.m., the kitchen door burst open. Senator Sterling – a leading presidential candidate – rushed in. His face, usually so authoritative on CNN, was now pale, sweat dripping down his forehead.
He didn’t look at Madeline, who was frantically running after him trying to stop him. He scanned the kitchen, the stunned servants, and stopped right where I was sitting.
“Cross! My God, you’re really here!” Sterling shrieked, his voice trembling like a lost child.
He lunged forward, kneeling beside my small wooden table, ignoring his ten-thousand-dollar tailored suit stained with soap on the floor.
“I need your protection! Right now!” Sterling clutched my hand, his eyes wide with terror. “They… they know about the ‘Night’ files. Madeline and her husband… they’re planning to eliminate me tonight!”
Madeline froze in the kitchen doorway. The arrogant smile on her lips vanished, replaced by utter shock. “Senator? Who are you talking to? That’s just Avery, a lowly employee…”
“Shut up, Madeline!” Sterling roared. “You don’t know who you’re holding captive in your house!”
Chapter 4: The Twist – The Will of Execution
I slowly set down the bread and stood up. My composure was like a frozen lake before a storm.
“Senator Sterling,” I said, my voice low and powerful. “I told you not to come to this party. But since you came, and since you interrupted my dinner…”
I turned to look at Madeline. She recoiled, her breath coming in short gasps.
“Madeline, you want to know what my job is, right?” I pulled a matte black metal badge, a hawk-headed badge of the Special Department of Justice, from my pocket. “I don’t work in an office. I’m the one cleaning up the mess that people like you and your husband have made. This ‘Charity Fund’ of yours is actually a money laundering system for South American drug cartels that I’ve been monitoring for the past two years.”
The real twist wasn’t that I was an agent. The twist was that Madeline’s husband – the one standing in the banquet hall – was actually my subordinate in a secret intelligence network, who had betrayed the organization to follow Madeline.
“Your husband confessed everything ten minutes ago.”
“…the moment your task force surrounds this mansion,” I whispered, glancing at my watch.
Chapter 5: The Hamptons Purge
Helicopters roared across the Hamptons sky. Huge searchlights shone directly into the mansion’s glass windows, obscuring its artificial splendor. FBI and SWAT agents stormed in through every escape route. The wealthy guests began to shriek, champagne spilling onto million-dollar carpets.
Madeline collapsed beside the sink she had intended to use to humiliate me.
“Avery… please… we’re friends…”
“The Sterling family used to be friends with your family, Madeline,” I said as the agents entered and handcuffed Sterling—who thought I was here to save him, but I was actually here to capture him. “But in the will of integrity, there is no place for traitors.”
I led Sterling through the grand ballroom, where hundreds of eyes stared. Horror was watching. I was still wearing that simple black dress, walking among the well-dressed men being escorted away.
Chapter 6: The Author’s Conclusion
The Thorne mansion was shrouded in the darkness of arrests. My silence of the past ten years had ended with a resounding explosion that shook American politics.
I stepped out onto the beach, the cool Atlantic air clearing my head. Sterling, Madeline, and dozens of others would face justice. A seat at the maid’s table had allowed me to see through every corner of the lies.
Sometimes, to see the truth, you have to be willing to sit in the lowest place. Because only there can you see the strings controlling the puppets above.
The author’s message: This story is an affirmation: Never judge a person’s worth by their seat at a party. The climax lies in the collapse of the arrogant ego when confronted with the harsh truth. bare.
My husband said he was going fishing for the weekend—until I caught a strange perfume scent. I opened his travel bag to check, and I went still when I found a soft pink lace piece folded neatly between two of his dress shirts, careful as a secret. I didn’t say a word. I just quietly swapped his daily pills for a strong dose of laxatives—enough to make him turn back before he could “cast a line.” And that was only the beginning…
Chapter 1: The Scent of Lies
Friday in Greenwich, Connecticut, began with a gray sky and cold winds sweeping through the old maple trees. My husband, Mark, was busy loading his luxury SUV. He was wearing camouflage, waterproof boots, and carrying an expensive fishing rod.
“I’m going with Tom’s gang to Lake Winnipesaukee. I need to relax this weekend; work at the law office is exhausting,” Mark said, then leaned down and placed a quick kiss on my forehead.
I, Elena, just smiled gently: “Good luck catching a big fish, I love you.”
But as soon as Mark turned his back to finish loading the ice chest, a scent assailed my nostrils. It wasn’t the usual smell of mud, moss, or pine. It was a sweet, intense fragrance of jasmine and musk – an expensive perfume I’d never worn.
My heart tightened. A bad premonition shot up my spine like an electric current. While Mark went inside to get his phone, I quickly unlocked his suitcase in the trunk. I rummaged through the pile of thick sweaters and jeans. And then, I froze.
Between two crisp shirts was a pale pink lace dress, neatly folded, carefully, like a precious secret. It wasn’t mine. It was too small, too provocative, and it exuded that strong jasmine scent.
My world crumbled in a second. Mark, my exemplary husband of ten years, who always said “Fishing is the purest hobby,” was apparently preparing for a completely different kind of “hunt.”
Chapter 2: The Antidote for the Traitor
I didn’t scream. I didn’t storm into the house to tear off his mask. I’d learned from my years as a risk analyst that the best revenge is well-prepared revenge.
I closed my suitcase as if nothing had happened. I walked into the kitchen. Mark was halfway through his coffee and preparing to take his daily multivitamin and blood pressure medication – a habit I always prepared in small containers.
“You forgot your medicine, darling,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm.
While he went to get water, I quickly swapped the multivitamins for a powerful laxative in compressed form that I had crushed and manually compressed. The dose was enough to bring an elephant to its knees within two hours.
“Take it, so you’ll have the strength to row,” I smiled as I watched him swallow those “secret” pills.
Mark waved goodbye, and the car sped off towards the northbound highway. I stood at the door, watching the car disappear into the distance. The hunt had now officially begun.
Chapter 3: Returning in Humiliation
Lake Winnipesaukee was about a three-hour drive from our house. My calculations showed the drug would start to take full effect when he’d driven about 90 miles – right in the middle of a stretch of highway with no rest stops nearby.
As expected, just over two hours later, I heard the screeching of tires in the yard. The SUV sped into the garage like an arrow. Mark slammed the car door, his face no longer his usual composed expression, but pale, drenched in sweat, his hands clutching his stomach.
He rushed straight into the ground-floor bathroom, leaving his luggage and fishing rods outside.
I stood in the living room, leisurely pouring myself a glass of red wine. Groans and the “chaos” from the bathroom echoed through the quiet house.
“Hey, Mark? Why are you back so early? Didn’t the fish bite?” I called out, my voice laced with feigned concern.
“You… you have caffeine poisoning… or something… Oh my God…” Mark’s voice trailed off between horrific colonic spasms.
Chapter 4: The Unmasking
While Mark was “imprisoned” in the bathroom, I quietly went outside to the car. I took his spare phone – the one I’d long ago installed a tracking device on but never used.
I opened the suitcase and took out the pink lace piece. This time, I looked more closely. There was a small label with the name of a lingerie shop in Manhattan. I also found a brand-new box of condoms hidden at the bottom of the suitcase.
I photographed everything and sent them to my own email and my divorce lawyer’s. Then I took Mark’s phone out. There was a new message from an unsaved number: “I’m at the lakeside apartment. The wine’s chilled, and I’m wearing the ‘pink thing’ you like. Hurry up, you jerk!”
I smiled and typed back: “He has terrible stomachaches, can’t go. His wife knows everything. She’s on her way there with the police because of suspected trespassing. Run!”
I deleted the message immediately. Then I went back inside. Mark emerged from the bathroom after almost an hour, looking ten years older, his legs trembling uncontrollably.
“Elena… I’m so tired… help me to bed…”
I stood blocking the stairs, still holding my glass of wine. “Which bed, Mark? Our bed, or the bed in the lakeside apartment you plan to sleep in with your little mistress tonight?”
Chapter 5: The Contract on the Stone Table
Mark’s face went from pale to deathly white.
He looked at the corpse. He looked at me, then at the pink lace I was holding.
“You… you can explain… It was just… a prank from your friends…”
“Don’t humiliate my intelligence anymore, Mark,” I threw the lace in his face. “That laxative was just to keep you here so we could have a decent conversation. You know, for the past 10 years, I’ve been behind all your success, managing all of this family’s investments. Do you think I didn’t know you withdrew $50,000 from the family fund to buy that apartment?”
I placed a file on the marble countertop in the kitchen.
“This is the divorce petition. And this is the property division agreement. I’ll leave you this house, 70% of the savings account, and custody of the children. In return, you won’t publicly disclose this evidence of infidelity to the bar—which could get me banned from practicing law for ethical violations.”
Mark staggered and collapsed into his chair. “You… you’ve calculated all this?”
“I told you,” I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “I’m used to handling risks. And you, Mark, are the biggest risk I’ve successfully eliminated.”…
