Chapter 322: Are You Lucas Gray?

Rebecca saw him first.

She was still laughing when the movement at the edge of her vision pulled her attention away from Lucas. The sound softened on her tongue as her eyes lifted and caught the shape cutting through the tables toward them.

"Oh."

Then, quieter:

"Oh."

Lucas followed her gaze.

Durnik was coming in hard. Not running, not shouting, but with the kind of aggressive walk that made his intention obvious before he got close enough to speak. Shoulders tight. Jaw locked. Eyes fixed on the man sitting in his chair like the sight alone was already an insult he could not swallow in public.

Rebecca’s interest sharpened at once.

This was the part she wanted to see. All that calm mouth Lucas had been using on her, all that easy teasing, all that unbothered confidence ~ she wanted to know what it looked like when the husband finally arrived. In her experience, men either stiffened, apologized too fast, or found a reason to leave the second Durnik’s shadow reached the table.

She waited for Lucas to rise.

He did not.

Instead, he lifted his wine glass, took a slow sip, and set it back down with the same unhurried care he had shown all evening. No scramble. No sudden explanation. He simply turned in the chair as Durnik closed the last few steps, then stood just enough to be polite and extended his hand.

Open. Steady. Waiting.

Durnik stopped short.

For a second the whole approach stalled on that one simple gesture. He had come ready to grab, to threaten, to demand how this man had entered his event and by whose invitation. His fist had already been halfway to becoming a decision. Security was one sentence away. One scene away.

And now the idiot was offering him a handshake like they were old acquaintances meeting over drinks.

Durnik’s fingers twitched at his side.

He wanted to knock the hand away. Wanted to seize Lucas by the collar and drag the truth out of him in front of everyone. Wanted to wipe that calm expression off his face before the night went any further. But the open palm stayed there between them, clean and public, turning violence into something that would look unhinged if he chose it.

Rebecca watched, openly entertained now.

Then a voice cut in from the side.

"Durnik."

A top investor was approaching, already smiling, already angling for a word. Important enough that the air around him carried weight. Important enough that a scene in front of him would cost more than pride.

Durnik’s face changed in an instant.

The aggression did not disappear. It only folded inward, forced under a thinner layer of control. His eyes flicked from Lucas to the investor and back again, calculating hard. This was still his ground. Lucas was inside his event, under his roof for the night, close enough to reach later. There would be time. There would be consequences that did not need an audience of money and influence.

So Durnik smoothed his expression, turned slightly, and reached for the investor’s hand instead.

"Good to see you," he said, voice polished back into place as he shook. "I was just coming over."

The greeting landed cleanly enough for public ears.

But over the investor’s shoulder, Durnik’s eyes found Lucas again.

The message in them was simple.

Later.

Lucas only settled back into the chair, unbothered, as if the interrupted confrontation had been no more inconvenient than a pause in the music. Rebecca’s gaze moved between the two men, the boredom from earlier fully gone now.

Durnik’s hand was already out when the investor stopped.

The pause was small at first, easy to miss if someone was not watching closely. Then the man’s eyes moved past Durnik and landed on the younger man still seated at the table. Recognition worked across his face in real time. Not the vague kind. The sharp kind.

His offered handshake never completed.

Instead, he lowered his hand and turned fully toward Lucas, putting his back to Durnik so naturally it almost looked accidental. It was not. Durnik was left standing there with his arm still half-raised, smiling at the side of a man who had already stopped seeing him as the most important person in reach.

"Are you Lucas Gray?" the investor asked. "The owner of Switch Live?"

Lucas blinked once.

He had expected tension tonight. He had expected Durnik’s anger, quiet threats, maybe an attempt to push him out. What he had not expected was to be recognized that cleanly in a room built around TikTok’s own power.

Before he could answer fully, the man was already extending his hand again, this time in the right direction.

"I’m Matthew."

Lucas rose just enough to meet the handshake. "Good to meet you."

Matthew held the grip a second longer than politeness required, eyes bright with genuine interest.

"I loved the way you brought that company back," he said. "That advert before Switch launched ~ how did you even think of it? I’ve been paying attention. I’m interested."

The words were not loud, but they carried.

Around them, heads began to turn. A man like Matthew did not drift into casual conversation without people noticing. In investment circles his name had weight for a simple reason: when he put money somewhere, it rarely failed. Other investors had learned to watch him the way lesser hunters watched the first animal to catch a scent. If Matthew was curious, there was usually a reason.

One guest stepped closer.

Then another.

Then a small cluster formed, drawn less by Lucas at first and more by the fact that Matthew was standing there, back to Durnik, speaking with open approval about Switch. Questions started stacking before Lucas could answer the first one. Someone asked about growth. Someone else asked about creator movement. Another leaned in just to hear what Matthew was so focused on.

The circle tightened.

And as it tightened, it pushed.

Durnik was forced a half-step back by the angle of someone’s shoulder. Then another guest shifted in and cut him out further. No one told him to move. No one looked at him with open disrespect. They simply stopped making room for him. The conversation had a new center, and he was no longer standing in it.

From where Rebecca sat, the whole thing was almost elegant in its cruelty.

Her husband had come over ready to reclaim the table. Instead he was being edged out of his own approach by men who were more interested in the stranger occupying his chair. Durnik’s face held the public smile a second too long, then another, while the group around Lucas grew denser and louder with polished curiosity.

Matthew barely glanced back.

He was still talking to Lucas, still asking about Switch, still treating the young man in front of him like the most relevant person at the table.

And Durnik, chairman of the night, host of the room, was left on the wrong side of a handshake that had never been meant for him after all.