Chapter 415: Transaction Approved

Bennett turned to him.

"I’ll need your account details."

The change was immediate. The hard edge he had carried through most of the meeting softened into something careful, almost eager. He opened the top drawer, took out a clean card, and wrote the information with steady hands. When he finished, he slid it across the desk toward her without delay.

"Of course."

The politeness in his voice was new. It sat differently in the room than anything he had offered earlier.

Caspian stayed on the sofa.

He still held onto a thin, stubborn hope. In his mind the whole thing could still collapse. The notification could be wrong. The transfer could bounce. Lucas could still be the same empty talker who had walked in with nothing but confidence and a calm face. Caspian clung to that possibility the way a man in deep water clings to the last piece of floating wood.

Bennett finished the transfer.

The confirmation appeared on her screen a moment later, clean and final.

She did not announce it. She simply lifted her eyes, found Caspian’s face, and let a small, quiet smile settle on her mouth. The smile was not wide. It did not need to be. It said everything. Transaction approved. Your turn is over.

Caspian’s face changed.

Whatever hope he had been nursing died in that single look. The color in his cheeks shifted. His jaw locked. He stood up so fast the sofa scraped softly against the floor.

"I’m leaving."

Moretti did not even glance at him. He was already moving papers across the desk, sorting documents with the focused satisfaction of a man who had just closed a deal larger than expected. The entitled client who had laughed loudest only minutes earlier no longer occupied any space in his attention.

Caspian turned to Trent.

"Let’s go."

Trent hesitated. He had never seen his boss lose a room like this. The words formed before he could stop them.

"Are we really~"

"Or what?" Caspian’s voice cracked upward, sharp and ugly. "Or what? Get your poor losing ass out of here."

The insult landed hard in the quiet office. Trent’s face tightened, but he said nothing. He moved.

Caspian paused at the doorway and looked back at Lucas one last time. The polished ease he usually carried was gone. What remained was raw and bitter.

"I’m not done with you, bastard."

Lucas only smiled.

Caspian yanked the door open hard enough that it hit the stopper with a dull thud and stormed out. Trent followed without another word. Their footsteps faded down the hallway until the building swallowed them completely.

Silence returned to the office, heavier than before.

Moretti finally looked up from the papers. He cleared his throat, the sound awkward in the new quiet.

"I apologize for the way my client spoke to you," he said. The words came quickly, almost practiced. "The young man is an entitled rich brat. If not for his father, I would have thrown him out of this office long ago. His father is a close friend of mine. I’ll speak to him. I’ll make sure the boy is taught properly."

He kept talking. Soft words. Careful words. The kind of words a man reaches for when he realizes he has misjudged the person sitting across from him. Extra money had a way of rewriting manners. He spoke about respect, about how certain young men forgot themselves, about how a father should correct that kind of behavior before it became permanent. Each sentence tried to close the distance he himself had helped create earlier.

Lucas listened for a short while, then stopped listening.

The flattery was empty. The sudden respect was transparent. He had gotten what he came for. Everything else was noise.

He cut across the next sentence without raising his voice.

"I want to inspect the car."

Moretti’s mouth closed at once.

"Of course. Please. This way."

He stood, moved around the desk, and held the office door open himself. The gesture was small, but Bennett noticed it immediately. She had dealt with him long enough to know how rarely he offered that kind of courtesy. The change was almost physical. The same man who had allowed Caspian to mock a potential buyer now stood holding a door like a careful host.

Lucas rose. Bennett followed.

They stepped out of the office side by side. The hallway outside was quieter than the showroom, the air cooler against the skin. Soft lighting ran along the ceiling. The floor shone under their steps. Moretti walked ahead, already speaking about the vehicle’s condition, the climate-controlled storage, the care his team had taken with every detail. Lucas let the words pass without comment. He had no need for the sales language anymore.

Bennett kept pace beside him.

She still turned the last few minutes over in her mind. The way the room had shifted. The way Caspian’s confidence had cracked. The way Moretti’s entire manner had rewritten itself the moment the money cleared. She had seen money change people before, but rarely this fast and this completely.

They reached the end of the corridor.

Moretti stopped in front of a wide door, entered a code on the panel beside it, and pushed it open. The collection room waited beyond, larger, quieter, and colder than the office they had left behind. The air carried the clean, faint scent of polished metal and treated leather. Soft overhead lights reflected off the floors and the low platforms where the vehicles sat.

He stepped aside to let them enter first.

"After you."

Lucas walked in. Bennett followed a half-step behind him. The door closed softly at their backs.

Inside, the room held its own kind of silence. Not empty. Controlled. The kind of silence that belonged to expensive things kept under careful watch. Moretti moved ahead again, already gesturing toward the far side of the space where the Profilée waited under clean light.

Lucas walked toward it without hurry.

Bennett stayed beside him, still quiet, still watching the shift in everyone around them. The deal was done. The money had moved. The mockery had left the building with Caspian. What remained now was the car itself, and the man who had just bought it without raising his voice once.