Chapter 191: "At The End Of The Day"

When the press conference resumed, the auditorium had regained some semblance of order, largely thanks to the security team.

The press and invited fans settled into their seats once more, while onstage, Biscuit reclaimed his usual position on Jordan’s lap at the panel table, apparently unconcerned by the chaos that had nearly engulfed the entire auditorium.

Jeremiah returned to the center of the stage beneath the spotlight.

His brass microphone stand remained lodged in the wreckage of the LED screen, forcing him to settle for a handheld microphone instead.

Strangely enough, he seemed to prefer it. Now, he could roam the stage freely, turning every movement into another element of his performance.

"All right, all right," Jeremiah said into the mic. "I hope everyone had some time to refresh during the break. That wasn’t too long a break, was it?"

The question drew little more than a sea of cautious nods.

Most of the audience still had vivid memories of Jeremiah’s earlier intervention. Whatever they had thought of Jeremiah Castellano before, they now regarded him with a distinctly different mixture of awe and apprehension.

Jeremiah took their nervous silence as a compliment. A satisfied glimmer passed through his eyes, before his smile settled back into its usual charming warmth.

"Well, now, I imagine everyone has been dying to get into the Q&A with our two fighters. I won’t keep you waiting any longer."

He gestured toward the left side of the panel table, where Nico Baldi sat beside his trainer.

"Let’s get our Q&A started with our first fighter — Nico ’The Apex Predator’ Baldi!"

Nico sprawled in his chair, legs planted wide, his shirt still unbuttoned to display his tattoos and scars in full.

At Jeremiah’s announcement, he leaned toward the microphone, clearly expecting the first question.

The reporters did not make him wait long. One of them seized the nearest microphone and shouted,

"Question for Nico Baldi! How does it feel sharing a stage with someone whose dirty laundry just got broadcast to the entire country?"

Nico looked almost pleased by the question. He immediately recognized the opportunity to stir up hostility and seized it without hesitation, contempt for his opponent written plainly across his face.

"Honestly, I thought I was walking into a fight, not a circus. I don’t even know if I’m fighting ’The Swan Queen’ or ’The Porn Queen’ next Saturday anymore."

The insult sent a ripple of laughter through the auditorium.

Nico’s trainer threw his head back and laughed openly beside him, while several reporters hurriedly scribbled the remark into their notebooks, and others captured it on camera.

At the opposite end of the table, Jordan looked as though he might vault over it and drive his fist through Nico’s mouth — injured shoulder be damned.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to make a scene. So he remained seated, his fist curling tightly against his thigh as he endured the laughter aimed at Aren beside him.

Nico, meanwhile, knew perfectly well that he’d struck a nerve with the crowd. He immediately pressed the advantage, leaning toward the microphone once more.

"If she fights as sloppy as she lives, this match won’t last sixty seconds. But if she wants to know what a real man feels like, I don’t mind smashing her — whether it’s in the cage or outside it."

Another wave of laughter rolled through the auditorium, this one louder than the last.

The veins along Jordan’s neck stood out sharply. He was seconds away from breaking.

Unfortunately for Nico, the momentary amusement failed to translate into sustained interest.

The reporters had already lost interest in him. Their attention shifted almost instantly to the fighter seated at the opposite end of the panel, and the questions came rushing toward Aren like a storm.

"Ariana! Care to respond to that? Is that why you turned to bloodsports — to fund your drug addiction and sex parties?"

"Miss Lombardi, over here! How many more recordings like those are out there?"

"No, over here! Are you considering joining the porn industry as well?"

Question after question came hurtling toward her, each more vicious than the last.

No one seemed particularly interested in the actual fight anymore. Technical questions, athletic credentials, fighting styles — all of it had been discarded.

They wanted Ariana Lombardi’s private life.

They wanted scandal.

They wanted humiliation.

And, most of all, they wanted a reaction from Ariana Lombardi herself — as though everyone in the auditorium had been restraining their curiosity for too long, and was now ravenous for whatever answer they could extract from her.

Throughout it all, Aren gave them nothing.

She sat perfectly still, her hands folded neatly in her lap. From the moment she’d taken her seat, she had barely moved, showing not the slightest hint of anger even when Nico deliberately insulted her.

Beneath that calm exterior, however, anger burned hotly through her chest.

She could feel it in the tension beneath her ribs, in the warmth creeping up the back of her neck — and in the almost overwhelming urge to snap back at every stranger shouting questions at her.

She wanted to defend herself.

She wanted to demand how any of them could possibly think they had the right to judge a life they knew nothing about.

Yet, she knew that losing her temper was exactly what they wanted.

One wrong word.

One careless sentence could make everything worse.

She couldn’t afford to give them that, so she held herself still. Whatever happened, she would not surrender control.

She remembered her training session with Isidore.

She remembered the strange tranquility of his presence, the steadiness of his hands when he had held hers, and the calmness in his voice when everything inside her had felt uncertain.

"Whenever you feel nervous for no particular reason," he had told her, "remember this feeling."

The memory alone loosened something inside her, and a small smile touched her lips.

’Thank you, Master Accardi.’

’I’ve remembered that feeling.’

When Aren finally rose from her chair, the movement was so deliberate that it immediately caught the attention of everyone onstage and off.

She leaned toward the microphone.

"Excuse me."

Her voice wasn’t loud.

It didn’t need to be.

The effect was immediate — the barrage of questions faltered, then collapsed into silence as the reporters realized Ariana Lombardi was finally preparing to speak.

"Please listen to this very carefully," Aren continued, her voice steady. "Because I will only say this once."

At once, the reporters lowered their microphones, and within seconds, the remaining noise faded into silence.

Every face turned expectantly toward the woman standing beneath the lights, straining to catch her next words.

Aren didn’t keep them waiting.

She delivered them quietly, yet with a cold decisiveness that cut through the auditorium like a knife.

"I have no obligation to answer brainless questions like these."

Every person in the auditorium froze.

Not one of them had been prepared for that. They stared at her in stunned silence, unable to process what they’d just heard.

Several fans — who weren’t fans at all — were the first to recover. They exchanged bewildered glances, while all the staff members backstage had stopped whatever they were doing.

Meanwhile, Nico and his trainer could only stare. Jeremiah blinked several times in rapid succession, seemingly uncertain whether he’d heard her correctly.

Out of everyone, Jordan was perhaps the most shocked.

He had heard plenty of stories about Ariana Lombardi’s reputation. He’d heard she could be sharp-tongued, arrogant, and spectacularly rude when she wanted to be.

But ever since he’d met her, he’d never heard her say a genuinely impolite or insulting thing — and certainly never with this much steel behind her voice.

Hearing that same woman dismiss an entire auditorium full of reporters as brainless was so unexpected that Jordan could only stare.

The only creature in the room who seemed entirely supportive of Aren’s declaration was Biscuit.

Biscuit immediately let out an excited yip, followed by several enthusiastic barks, his tail wagging furiously as though urging Aren to continue.

Aren, naturally, couldn’t let Biscuit down. She continued into the microphone, each word sharper and more deliberate than the last.

"Every single one of you is free to make whatever assumptions you want about me or the way I live my life. At the end of the day..."

The faintest smile touched her lips as Isidore’s voice echoed through her memory.

"...I know exactly who I am and what my values are, and none of those things can ever define who I am as a person."

The entire auditorium seemed to transform into a ghost town.

The reporters had gone dead silent, looking even more frightened than they had when they watched Jeremiah throw a brass microphone stand through an LED screen without hesitation.

Yet this time, their fear carried a different quality — less immediate terror and more bewilderment.

None of them had expected Ariana Lombardi to be capable of delivering such a firm, steely statement.

For several seconds, nobody seemed quite sure what to do with themselves. Most of the reporters exchanged nervous glances, suddenly uncertain whether they should continue — or what they could possibly ask next.

Ariana Lombardi had essentially told them that she would no longer entertain their questions. Pressing her for more answers now felt like volunteering to be humiliated.

So instead of continuing to attack her, several reporters immediately arrived at what they apparently considered a more brilliant solution:

They would attack the young man sitting beside her instead.

"Hey, you there with the dog!" one reporter suddenly shouted into his microphone.

Another immediately followed. "Are you Ariana’s boyfriend, or just her sex partner like Isidore Accardi?"

"Were you in one of those gangbangs as well?" a third reporter demanded. "Or did you film those tapes?"