Chapter 4 - The Digital Firestorm
"Let go of me, Mr. Ashford," I said without turning around.
Ethan loosened his grip immediately, stepping back to give me space, his hands raised in surrender. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to grab you. But please... don't call me Mr. Ashford. Not after that."
"You are my employer's son," I said, finally facing him in the dim, quiet corridor behind the kitchens. The scent of roasted garlic and dish soap was a sharp contrast to the expensive perfume of the ballroom. "Tomorrow morning, your father will fire me. Everyone knows it. I’m going to go to my locker, pack my belongings, and leave before security escorts me out."
"He won't fire you," Ethan promised, his voice earnest. "I run the hospitality division, not him. He can't touch your contract."
"You don't understand men like your father," I said with a tired sigh. "Pride is a terminal illness for the wealthy. He will never look at me without remembering that he was forced to bend his knee to a maid."
Before Ethan could reply, his phone buzzed violently in his breast pocket. Then another chime went off. And another. A barrage of rapid notifications lit up his screen.
He pulled the phone out, frowning as he glanced at the display. "What on earth...?"
"What is it?"
Ethan turned the screen toward me. A video of our dance—shot from three different angles by guests in the front row—had already been uploaded to TikTok and X. In less than twenty minutes, the primary clip had amassed over two million views.
The caption read: *Billionaire tries to humiliate maid at gala, gets destroyed on the dance floor.*
Beneath it, the comment section was exploding:
— *Look at that frame! Look at her shoulder alignment! That is NOT a beginner!*
— *Wait... pause at 0:42. That pivot... the way she anchors her left heel before the rise... only one dancer in history moved like that.*
— *Is that Claire Bennett?! The undefeated national champion who vanished after that horrible car accident in 2012?!*
— *Claire Bennett was declared crippled! She retired! There's no way she's working as a banquet maid in Chicago!*
My heart plummeted straight into my stomach. The blood drained from my face so rapidly that the room seemed to tilt.
Twelve years. Twelve years of obscurity, of blending into the background, of scrubbing toilets and wiping tables just so the world would forget the girl who had lost everything on a rain-slicked highway. All of it was undone in a matter of twenty minutes.
Ethan was watching my face carefully. The confusion in his eyes slowly crystallized into total realization.
"Claire Bennett," he whispered, speaking the name as if it were a sacred artifact. "My mother used to collect your competition tapes. She watched you win Blackpool in 2011. She told me I would never see another dancer with that kind of soul."
"Ethan, please," I pleaded, my voice trembling for the first time all night. "Don't say that name."
"It's you, isn't it?"
May you like
Before I could deny it, the heavy metal door at the end of the hall swung open with a resounding bang. Two private security guards in dark suits stepped through, flanked by Walter Ashford's personal attorney, Arthur Vance.
"Claire Miller—or whatever your name is," Arthur said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses with cold detachment. "Mr. Ashford has instructed us to terminate your employment immediately. Furthermore, you are trespassing on private property. Hand over your badge and leave through the loading dock."
