Rejected Heiress, Reigning Queen novel Chapter 10

Carter's eyes darkened aggressively, an intensely murderous aura beginning to roll off him.

Spotting an opening, Gillian immediately piled on, "Exactly! Even if you are hopelessly obsessed with Percy, he's officially my boyfriend now. If you're going to throw a desperate tantrum, do it outside, not at a professional conference."

"Who exactly claimed I didn't have an invitation?" Emma fired back, smoothly pulling out her phone and tapping across the screen.

Percy practically lunged at her, brutally crushing her wrist as he hissed through gritted teeth, "You're a finance major. Do you honestly think skimming a few medical journals qualifies you to breathe the same air as the people in this room?"

Without missing a beat, Emma's free hand shot out, delivering a deafening slap across Percy's cheek. She was still smiling, but her eyes were absolute voids of frost.

"I literally just warned you. Don't touch me, or face the consequences."

The sheer force of the blow snapped Percy's head to the side, completely short-circuiting his brain.

He wasn't the only one—aside from Carter, whose expression remained terrifyingly unreadable, every single person in the vicinity was left totally paralyzed with shock.

One slap barely even scratched the surface of Emma's rage, but catching a brief glimpse of Carter out of the corner of her eye inexplicably helped her dial back her bloodlust.

She arched a perfect eyebrow. "Aren't you going to rein in your dog, Carter?"

An imperceptible, highly amused smirk tugged at the corner of Carter's mouth before he instantly snapped back to his flawlessly intimidating poker face.

"Percy."

Percy's face flushed a violent, humiliating crimson. He had just cocked his fist back to retaliate, but the mere sound of his cousin's voice forced him to drop his arm immediately, leaving him aggressively hyperventilating as he glared absolute daggers at Emma.

Emma completely ignored his existence. Subconsciously drifting a step closer to Carter's protective aura, she flipped her phone around to display a highly secured email.

"I am here as the official representative of CFT Corporation. Are you absolutely certain you want to kick me out?"

Emma aimed the question directly at the VIP executive who had just tried to expel her.

Gillian, completely utterly ignorant to what CFT even was, assumed Emma was just violently name-dropping to sound important. "Emma, Carter only stopped Percy to protect the Harrington family's public image! How dare you try to ride his coattails to act tough?"

Emma swept a chilling, dismissive glance over her, not even bothering to waste a single syllable in response.

With the domestic pharmaceutical market rapidly exploding, it was the perfect time to plug that gap. He desperately wanted to corner the market to secure his own branch's status within the Harrington empire, which was the sole reason he had strategically targeted the Lockwoods to begin with.

Percy was genuinely baffled as to how Emma could have ever crossed paths with anyone from the legendary CFT Corporation.

Was Carter secretly pulling the strings for her behind the scenes?

"You know what? Never mind," Emma abruptly announced. "If your guest list is so abysmally tragic that it includes people who have never even heard of CFT, I can only imagine how utterly pathetic the rest of this summit is. I'm officially withdrawing my attendance."

Emma slipped her phone back into her purse, making her absolute, unfiltered disgust for Gillian staggeringly obvious to everyone in the room.

Gillian exploded into a blind rage. "What are you so smug about?! If the Lockwoods hadn't funded your luxurious little vacation abroad, you never would have had the chance to even scrub the floors at CFT Corporation!"

Emma's patience officially hit zero. She grabbed Gillian by the collar, violently yanking her forward until they were practically nose-to-nose, her voice dropping to a terrifying, sub-zero register.

"The Lockwoods practically begged me on their knees to study abroad. I wasn't the one who swapped your pathetic life, and if I had any choice in the matter, do you honestly think I would ever want anything to do with you freaks?"