The green lawn of the White House welcomed famous and dignified guests by playing the country"s main symphony orchestra. Musicians in exquisite outfits were plucking the strings professionally, waving their bows and blowing into the pipes of their instruments, intertwining the individual sounds of each of them into a mesmerizing melody.
Strict security of several levels was checking everyone who came to the event, regardless of status, if a person had a personal invitation from Marc Technologies, then he could pa.s.s all the checking without problems.
Despite the great excitement, the organization of the event was at the highest level as it followed the status of the venue, so all the checks took no more than ten minutes.
"Well, even the President"s inauguration was less pompous than this presentation," Daniel chuckled discontentedly, scanning the crowd of famous politicians, businessmen, and show business stars.
"This is because your President is very modest," Nick commented on the cousin"s remark.
""Your"? For your information, David and I are subjects of Her Royal Majesty, if you forgot."
"Oho, that"s only when were you in England for the last time, huh, subject?" Nick winked at Daniel playfully and nodded toward Corey, who was chatting with Elena.
"Love knows no bounds, my brother," Daniel declared with the pretense of importance, "I would agree to live even in Siberia if Corey were from there."
"I"m afraid then in the first winter we would have to order a funeral in your honor, given your "pa.s.sionate" love for the cold," Armand p.r.i.c.ked an old friend. Daniel and the cold were like two parallel, the man did everything possible so that they did not intersect.
"Tsk, you are the one to talk here, a guy who doesn"t even have a pa.s.sport," Elder Anderson growled and went towards Corey with a proudly raised head, "What are you talking about?" he asked two friends.
"Ah, Elena asked why we took Ashley with us to this ceremonial reception," Corey sighed and stroked her daughter, who was standing next to her, on the head.
She would love to leave the girl at home, but Ashley saw Rick in the video and knew that her dad would be here. It was useless to argue with the child, especially since they already knew that Rick had already met with Ashley. The girl promised not to cause problems and behave well, so Corey eventually agreed to this step. All that the woman wanted to do was talk with the father of her child and find out about the goals of the man in relation to the girl.
"Hey princess, I"ve found a delicious table here, do you want to take a look?" Nick squatted next to the girl, and she nodded her head, supporting his idea, "Let me stay with her," he suggested, took Ashley by the hand and led her to the table with sweets.
There were more than three hundred guests and a small child could easily get lost in such a crowd, so Corey was more than glad to offer Nick to be the nanny of her hooligan pirate, after all, he was the only one who had not yet fully understood her daughter"s naughty temperament.
"By the way, is this your mother"s pendant that you talked about?" Corey began to examine the jewelry around Elena"s neck with interest, "Such an interesting ornament... Ay!" But as soon as she touched the pendant, her palm seemed to be stung by a light electric discharge.
"What, what is it?" Elena was afraid, a clear feeling of pain was reflected on Corey"s face.
"I don"t know," Corey shook her head and decided to touch the pendant again, but the second time, an unpleasant discharge pierced her palm, "Is it electrified or something?!" she asked her friend, shaking her hand so that at least to reduce the feeling of pain in her palm.
Elena twisted the pendant in her hand but did not feel anything unusual.
David looked at the jewelry and at his puzzled wife and held out his hand, "d.a.m.n it really hurts," he fully tested on himself what Corey had felt before.
"Amelia"s pendant is a family relic of the Teser clan, which has been pa.s.sed from generation to generation over many centuries. Only those in whose veins Teser"s blood is flowing, or those whom the owner himself allowed to touch it, can touch it," Lina explained, "If you do not belong to any of these categories, you cannot take this thing."
"d.a.m.n, this is indeed an advanced defense system, ah," Daniel could not resist the temptation and also touched the pendant. Lina looked at Armand, mentally asking the question whether he, like everyone else, would engage in conscious masochism, to which the man raised his hands up,
"Nah, I pa.s.s, I already had experience with this thing, and it was enough." The man could not imagine anything bad when Amelia once offered a bet to him whether he could hold this pendant for five minutes, which he easily accepted. If he knew at that moment that the next five minutes would become almost the most debilitating moment of his life, he would never have agreed to this adventure.
Elena looked at the piece of jewelry in amazement, and this could not have crossed her mind. It turns out that only she could touch it, as a descendant of Teser, and Jun, since Amelia herself entrusted him the pendant, no one else could touch the jewelry... Stop!
Awareness of this strange fact struck her even more than the unusual feature of her mother"s decoration, Elena turned her head and looked at a young man playing with a little girl not far from them. His attention was completely focused on Ashley, and he did not feel the gaze directed at him.
"What is it?" David noticed that his wife"s expression had changed and the look with which she was looking at Nick was not as usual.
"No, nothing, just... Never mind," Elena turned to her husband and looked as if nothing had happened, but a whirlpool of thoughts circled in her head, the answer to which she still did not know.
"Lina, and if I ask David, for example, to help me remove the pendant from my neck, will it be considered that I entrusted it to him and there won"t be such a reaction in that case?"
"No, it doesn"t work like that," Lina shook her head, "You need to wish with all your heart for the pendant to accept him, but," the girl looked from Elena to David and then back, "I recommend, not to. I am asking you not to do that. Even if it"s your husband."
"It"s okay, if this thing works like that, that means that it"s important for something," David squeezed Elena"s palm in his hand, although he didn"t like that he didn"t understand something, the man was sure of one thing - that it was not an ordinary family relic, so the fewer people had access to it, the better.
Then he began thinking about the main "hero" of today"s event, who still has not appeared.
All last week before the banquet, they tried to find any information on Marc Technologies, but they found nothing. Even David"s data a.n.a.lysis skills didn"t allow him to find anything that went beyond the information already available on the net.
They used the military connections of Jason, a mutual friend of Elena and Corey, but he ended up with nothing as well.
"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you, President of the United States of America, Mr. Douglas Jackson," the host"s loud voice and solemn music interrupted the guest"s dialogs and the eyes of all those present were on the stage.
An adult gray-haired man, about seventy years old, was walking up the steps to the podium, a friendly smile on his face, a stylish metal cane in his hand. A sea of applause swept over the hall when he stopped at the stand.
"Ok, ok, thank you, I am very pleased," the President waved his hand in greeting, "First, thank you for the decision to come to the meeting today, I"m sure that we are about to enter a new era. An era that will lead our country and many other countries to prosperity that the world has never seen before."
"Yes, I"m already impatient to introduce these developments into my business," one of the guests standing near Elena and David said in a whisper.
"Do you know what this will be about?" Asked the owner of a large construction corporation, "My secretaries couldn"t find out anything," the man frowned, he didn"t like the feeling that someone knew more than he did.
"Hah, if we couldn"t find out anything, then what I can say about ordinary people," Daniel commented sarcastically at the whispers of guests coming from different directions but having a common motive. n.o.body knew exactly what was going to be discussed at this event, but, given the magnitude of what was happening, this something had to be very significant.
"By the way, didn"t you think that Jason in the last conversation was somehow different?" Armand asked the others in a whisper.
"Hmm, I think he was the same as always," Daniel shook his head, their dialogue with Jason was full of p.r.i.c.ks and mockery in the direction of each other, and the man did not notice anything unusual.
"You stole the love of his life, naturally, his att.i.tude towards you will always be the same," David answered.
"It"s not my fault that Corey chose another man, although ... Maybe it"s my fault, I have a d.a.m.n amazing charisma," Daniel raised his eyebrows, he could not miss the moment and not boast of his long-awaited victory over the heart of his beloved woman.
"All right, everyone shush!" Corey poked the contented winner to the side, "Don"t you see that the President is speaking?! What are you like small children at a matinee in elementary school?" Corey didn"t like it from childhood when someone would distract her from listening to interesting people, whether live or on TV, so it was very easy for her to reprimand three adult men as if they were ill-bred teenage boys.
"So," the President finished his welcoming speech and took a step back, "Allow me to introduce you the hero of this evening, the founder and owner of an advanced development company, Marc Technologies, Mr. Marcus Taubert!"
All the guests stood still, in the hall there was silence. From behind the curtains a tall fair-haired man appeared on the stage, he was walking with a confident and unhurried step to the podium, in his movements, there was not a single gram of stiffness, as if he was not bothered by the presence of such a large crowd of spectators. Moreover, these spectators were the most outstanding people of the country, who achieved success in various fields.
He stopped at the stand and looked around the crowd, no matter how many guests were here, Marcus could easily find the one whose attention he needed at that moment.
Elena felt that the pendant on her neck suddenly became hot as if it had been lying under the scorching sun in the very center of the desert for several hours, she looked at the pendant, and then at the stage and froze.
Her eyes were shackled by two dark blue abysses of another pair of eyes staring straight into her soul like she was the only person in this room.
The corners of the man"s lips turned up, he leaned towards the microphone and said in a low captivating voice, "Welcome to the new world. My world."