Chapter 309: The Long Way to the Mansion

The moment Lucas heard what Gracie said, a small smile pulled at his mouth.

Today was finally leaning in his direction.

"What is it?" he asked.

Gracie did not waste time. She told him she had what he needed and asked him to send an address so they could meet.

That part made Lucas pause.

A cafe was the obvious choice, but he shut the idea down almost immediately. Gracie was not a normal woman he could sit with in public without consequences. She was a celebrity. If the two of them were seen together, phones would come out before the drinks even arrived. Photos. Short videos. Online noise. By evening, people who had never heard his name would already be inventing a story about it.

He did not need that kind of attention right now.

So he made a different decision.

He would bring her to the mansion.

It was private. Controlled. Far harder for random cameras to turn into content. The only real problem was not paparazzi.

It was the girls.

Lucas sent Gracie the address, then got into his car and headed home without delaying. The sooner he got ahead of the situation, the less messy it would become.

By the time he walked into the house, Debbie was already recovering, though one of her cheeks was still faintly red. Mia and Daisy were nearby as well. Lucas did not drag it out. He told them straight that he had invited Gracie over, and that she was coming because she could help him with something important.

The change in their faces was immediate.

Not loud anger.

Not open shouting.

Just that quick, synchronized sadness women get when a name they do not like is about to enter their territory.

Lucas started explaining. He told them Gracie was connected to the same bastard who had moved against him, and that she could help him hit back.

Before he could finish, Mia spoke up.

"It’s your house," she said. "You can bring whoever you want."

The words were fair. The tone was not exactly joyful.

Daisy and Debbie exchanged a look with her, the kind of silent conversation that did not need speech. Unfair as the whole thing felt, locking Lucas down completely just because they disliked the guest would make them look small. After a moment, they smoothed their expressions and told him not to overthink it.

They would manage.

Lucas nodded, but he was not fooled.

They had agreed with their mouths. Their faces were still holding the rest of the opinion in storage. He had no system ability that fully explained women, and scenes like this only reminded him of that fact. If three girls could say "it’s fine" while looking like someone had cancelled Christmas, then "it’s fine" clearly had multiple meanings.

Still, he did not push the argument.

In his mind, the order was simple.

First, deal with Durnik.

Use Gracie while she was useful.

Teach that fool a lesson.

After that, he would make it up to the girls properly. Food, attention, time ~ whatever returned the house to normal. That could come later. Right now, revenge had the cleaner schedule.

Lucas sat down and waited.

Gracie was on her way.

While Lucas waited at the mansion, Gracie stared at the address he had sent and immediately ordered a ride.

The car that arrived looked ordinary enough. She climbed into the back seat, gave the driver the location, and shut the door. Only after the vehicle started moving did she notice the way the young man behind the wheel kept glancing at her through the rearview mirror.

Not the normal quick check.

The other kind.

He knew her face.

For the first few minutes he tried to play it casual, tapping the steering wheel, pretending the silence needed help. Then the questions started.

Was she really heading all the way out there alone?

Was she filming something today?

Had she been online earlier?

Gracie answered with almost nothing. One-word replies. Short sounds. The kind of responses that should have told any person with sense to stop talking and drive.

This one did not have sense.

A little later, she caught the real reason for his courage.

His phone was up.

Not for navigation.

For her.

The camera was on, angled toward the back seat like he had already imagined the caption, the comments, and the easy engagement that came with filming a celebrity who could not immediately escape.

Gracie’s patience thinned at once.

"Drop the phone," she said coldly, "and do your job."

The driver laughed under his breath, the stupid kind of laugh people used when they thought they were already winning. He did not lower the phone right away. That was enough.

"I said drop it."

When he still hesitated, Gracie leaned forward. "Stop the car. I’m getting down here."

Only then did he react properly.

"We haven’t reached the location," he said quickly, finally sounding less brave. "I can’t drop you here. This stretch is empty. It’s risky."

Gracie sat back hard against the seat, jaw tight.

She hated that he was right about the road. There was no clean crowd to disappear into, no busy corner where another ride could replace him immediately. If she forced her way out now, she would only create a bigger scene ~ and a bigger scene was exactly what an idiot with a phone wanted.

So she kept her cool.

Barely.

She stopped talking to him completely and watched the map on her own screen instead. As long as the car still followed the correct direction, she could endure it. She was not going to give him tears, panic, or a clipped video of a famous woman arguing with a driver. He wanted a trend.

She refused to become one.

What should have been a thirty-five-minute ride stretched longer.

Then longer again.

Whether he was taking the slowest possible legal route on purpose or simply driving like a man trying to stretch screen time, the result was the same. The city thinned. The roads grew quieter. The minutes piled up until the trip crossed a full hour and kept going.

By the time the car finally slowed near the address Lucas had sent, Gracie’s mood was sharp enough to cut glass.

Then she saw the place.

The mansion rose beyond the gate with the kind of quiet wealth that did not need to show off loudly to be understood. Clean lines. Controlled space. The opposite of the noisy online world she knew how to manipulate. For a second, even through irritation, she was visibly shocked that this was where Lucas lived.

The driver stopped and waited with the hopeful face of a man who still thought proximity equaled opportunity.

Gracie pulled out the money and pushed it toward him.

He tried to reject it with some weak line about not minding, maybe hoping the refusal would open a friendlier ending.

Gracie did not entertain it.

She forced the payment on him, opened the door, and stepped out before he could invent another reason to keep her there. The gate was already ahead of her. She walked toward it with her bag in hand and her phone raised, calling Lucas as she moved.

The second Gracie shut the door and walked toward the gate, the driver lunged for his phone like a man checking lottery numbers.

He opened the gallery fast.

Please.

Please.

Something usable.

The video was there.

He tapped it.

Three seconds of blurry seat.

A bit of shoulder.

A bag strap.

Then the camera jumped like he had been filming with his elbow.

No clear face.

No clean angle.

No content.

Just a short, ugly clip that looked like it had been recorded during an earthquake.

Before he could even feel the full pain of that discovery, a notification popped up across the screen.

Storage full.

The driver stared at it in silence.

Then he stared harder, as if the phone might apologize and fix itself.

It did not.

"Are you serious?" he whispered.

He tried deleting random files with the urgency of a man performing emergency surgery. Photos. Old voice notes. A video of a cat from 2023. Anything. The phone lagged, stuttered, and rewarded him with the same result.

Storage full.

In the distance, Gracie was already at the gate, phone to her ear, completely unbothered by his existence.

The driver dragged both hands down his face.

One hour.

Extra turns.

Missed opportunity.

And the final product was a three-second cursed video of a seat.

"Useless thing," he muttered at the phone, starting the car with pure bitterness. "I carried you all this life for what?"

The phone, being a phone, said nothing.

He drove off in defeat, one hand on the wheel, the other still unlocking and locking the screen like the storage might recover out of pity.