Chapter 3 - The Spilled Vintage
The banquet hall that evening was a theater of wolves in designer silk. Twenty guests sat along the banquet table, laughing over dry martinis and cuts of rare steak, while armed guards stood at attention like gargoyles along the perimeter.
Damian Hail sat at the head of the mahogany table. He had not touched his food. His cuff links caught the candlelight as his long, scarred fingers lightly tapped the stem of his untouched crystal glass. His face was carved from granite—strikingly handsome, utterly devoid of warmth. To his right sat Genevieve, dripping in diamonds, laughing a fraction too loudly at a joke made by an Italian council boss.
Marin’s hands trembled slightly as she balanced the silver tray bearing a rare 1945 Romanée-Conti. She kept her chin pressed to her chest, moving with practiced, rhythmic grace.
*Just pour the wine. Serve the second course. Clock out. Call the hospital.* That was her mantra.
"More, darling?" Genevieve’s sweet, venomous voice drifted over the murmur of the room. She was looking at Damian, but Damian hadn't spared her a glance in twenty minutes. His attention was fixed on a series of encrypted reports resting subtly on his lap.
Ignored and simmering with silent rage, Genevieve shifted her gaze toward the approaching staff. Her eyes found Marin. A flicker of recognition sparked behind the heiress's heavily lined lids—the maid from the conservatory.
Marin stepped forward, lowering the bottle to fill Genevieve’s empty goblet. She maintained the textbook three-inch distance, her breath steady, her movements flawless.
Suddenly, Genevieve’s elbow jerked out. It was a calculated, deliberate spasm. Her forearm struck the bottle squarely, and with a theatrical, high-pitched gasp, Genevieve knocked her other hand directly into the heavy bottle.
The dark, blood-red vintage didn't just spill. Genevieve grabbed the goblet herself, tilted it sharply, and threw the entirety of the crimson liquid directly into Marin’s face.
"You clumsy, incompetent peasant!" Genevieve shrieked, jumping up from her chair and kicking her silk seat back with a clatter.
The dark wine soaked Marin’s hair, dripping down her pale forehead, stinging her eyes, and staining the crisp white apron over her chest until she looked as though she had been brutally wounded. The freezing liquid shocked her nervous system, but Marin didn't cry out. She stood stock-still, wine pooling on her eyelashes, her hands gripping the silver tray so tightly her knuckles cracked.
"Look what you’ve done to my gown!" Genevieve yelled, her voice reverberating through the dead-silent room. "Christian Dior couture, ruined by an insect who belongs in a gutter!"
The entire room froze. Silver forks paused in mid-air. The guards didn't twitch. Marin swallowed the copper taste of humiliation, dropping instantly to her knees to gather the shattered shards of crystal on the floor.
"I... I apologize, Miss Vance," Marin whispered, her voice barely audible, blood mixing with wine as a glass fragment sliced into her thumb. "It won't happen again."
May you like
Genevieve raised her hand, her manicured palm poised to deliver a vicious slap across the kneeling girl’s cheek. "Apologize with your face on the floor, you stupid—"
Genevieve's hand never landed.
