She Quit Her Family and Found Herself novel Chapter 117

A date?

Caspian Sterling had a girlfriend?

Herbert rarely paid attention to high-society gossip, but during his father's obsessive hunt for the phantom player named 'Sterling', he had asked Justin to poke around the Sterling family.

The intel had been crystal clear—Caspian was notoriously single. Always had been.

When Herbert first heard it, he found it absurd. Caspian was a bit younger than him, but hitting his thirties. With his elite status and striking looks, how could he be unattached?

But it was the truth. Justin had mentioned Caspian spent six or seven years abroad and only recently returned. No one knew where he went, and the family kept an airtight lid on it. Whether he had any romantic history during those missing years was a mystery.

Regardless, hearing the billionaire casually drop that he was here with a date instantly spiked Herbert's curiosity.

Since Caspian's eyes were glued to the elevators, Herbert naturally followed his gaze.

Sylvie turned her head as well. She was dying to know what kind of woman could stand beside a titan like Caspian Sterling—and be publicly claimed by him.

At the elevator bank, only two women were waiting.

By the time Herbert and Sylvie looked, the doors had already opened. The first woman was already stepping inside, leaving them with nothing but a fleeting glimpse of a beautiful silhouette from the back.

The second woman, however, they saw perfectly clearly.

She had a plain, fresh face, an average build, and wore notoriously modest, inexpensive clothes. Her hair was pulled back into a simple, unstyled ponytail, and a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses rested on her nose.

She looked like an impoverished academic.

Sylvie's eyes widened. She stole a bewildered glance at the impeccably tailored Caspian.

Was this billionaire into the aggressively plain, puritan aesthetic?

Sylvie's eyes went wide. She opened her mouth in panic, but Herbert beat her to it.

"No. She isn't my wife."

"Not your wife?" Caspian let out a dark, mocking laugh, his eyes dripping with contempt. "Seeing how intimately you two were hovering over each other, I assumed you were married. My mistake. Though to be fair, in places like this, I only bring my actual date."

The tension in the lobby snapped like a high-tension wire.

Herbert wasn't an idiot. He heard the venom and the implication loud and clear. The polite, professional mask he was clinging to shattered instantly.

Sylvie stood frozen in place, her face draining of color before flushing violently red.

What Caspian had just said was the social equivalent of calling her a cheap mistress to her face.

Even the H&J employees and their families standing nearby had caught the heavy implication.