To men like Victor Hale, appearance was not merely a characteristic; it was final, unappealable evidence. They built their entire understanding of human worth on superficial labels, tailored suits, skin tone, and job titles. If you did not fit into their narrow, preconceived template of authority, you were an imposter.
Naomi took a slow, measured breath, feeling the cool air fill her lungs. “Would you like me to ask the floor manager to come over and reassign your table, sir?”
“No,” Victor said, shaking his head slowly, a sly smile spreading across his lips. “I want you to stop pretending.”
Naomi said nothing. She simply waited, holding his gaze.
“You’re making my guests uncomfortable,” Victor continued, his tone turning mockingly stern. “You’re standing here lying about your qualifications, claiming you went to an Ivy-league tier university, claiming you speak foreign languages, just to save face because you can’t handle being told you’re in over your head.”
Naomi looked past Victor to the three men sitting across from him. They indeed looked uncomfortable—not because of her, but because they were watching a host humiliate a worker for his own personal amusement.
The younger executive sitting next to Henry Lin suddenly leaned over to his colleague and muttered something in rapid, fluid Mandarin, his tone laced with quiet irritation:
“Why is he treating her like this? Is this how American businessmen conduct themselves? It’s completely uncivilized.”
Naomi understood every single syllable. The tonal inflections, the regional vocabulary, the underlying frustration—it was all crystal clear to her. She felt the corners of her mouth twitch with the sudden, sharp urge to smile, but she maintained her iron composure. She kept her face completely neutral, showing no reaction whatsoever to the comment.
Victor caught the subtle shift in her posture. He chuckled, leaning back again. “See? You don’t understand a damn word they’re saying, do you?”
Naomi looked down at him. “I understand every word he just said.”
“Prove it,” Victor snapped instantly.
Naomi had the capability to translate the sentence on the spot. She could have shattered his illusion right then and there. But she paused, looking at Victor’s flushed, expectant face. She saw a man who had never been held accountable for his arrogance, a man who believed that money granted him absolute immunity from basic human decency.
“Would you like me to prove it?” Naomi asked quietly.
Victor’s eyes lit up with malicious glee. “Yes. Absolutely. Let’s hear it.”
He glanced around the dining room. By now, the tension at Table Twelve had drawn the subtle attention of nearby tables. A couple sitting at a adjacent table had stopped eating, watching the interaction with guarded curiosity. Near the bar, a floor manager was beginning to look over nervously, sensing that something was going wrong.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Victor said, his voice rising slightly, clearly enjoying the audience.
Naomi stood her ground, waiting.
“If you can speak one complete, grammatically correct sentence in Mandarin—not three memorized words from a tour guide, not something you picked up from a language app on your phone, but a real, complete sentence—I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars.”
Beside him, Henry Lin’s eyebrows twitched slightly upward. The younger Shanghai executive frowned, looking at Victor with sharp disapproval.
Naomi raised a single eyebrow, looking at the older man with cool detachment. “Fifty thousand dollars?”
Victor smiled, a smug, self-satisfied grin. “You heard me. Fifty grand. Right here, right now. I’ll write you a personal check from my private account before I leave this table.”
Naomi looked at him, her tone completely level. “That’s a lot of money for one sentence.”
“I have a lot of money,” Victor replied instantly, puffing out his chest, leaning into the words with an unbearable vanity. “Fifty thousand is pocket change to me. But to you? That’s probably two years of running around carrying plates.”
There was something profoundly, deeply unpleasant about the way he said it. Money, to Victor, was not merely a tool for purchasing goods or securing freedom; it was a weapon to be brandished, a stick to poke at people, a mechanism to enforce submission and enjoy the spectacle of someone begging for crumbs.
Naomi glanced once more toward Henry Lin. The silver-haired executive was watching her with intense focus. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t smiling. He was simply analyzing her—reading the posture of her spine, the steady focus in her brown eyes, the quiet, unyielding composure that Victor’s insults had failed to break.
Victor, sensing that his initial offer hadn't produced the desperate stuttering or frantic compliance he was hoping for, suddenly tapped his heavy gold signet ring against the wood of the table.
“Actually…” he said, his smile broadening into a challenge, his eyes gleaming with aggressive theater. “Let’s make it interesting. Make it one hundred thousand dollars.”
A quiet, collective murmur rippled through the immediate vicinity of the dining room. A diner at a neighboring table lowered his wine glass, whispering to his partner, “No way. Is he serious?”
Victor looked directly up at Naomi, leaning in closer, lowering his tone to a sharp, mocking whisper. “One hundred thousand dollars cash, Naomi. One sentence. Prove me wrong in front of everyone. Or admit you’re a liar, drop the act, and go find the manager to get off my floor.”