Chapter 7 - The Divided Ballroom
Above them, in the grand ballroom, the three hundred elite guests were on the verge of a full-scale riot.
Rumors had spread like wildfire. Guests clutching smartphones were frantically refreshing news feeds as local reporters, tipped off by an anonymous source, began broadcasting live from outside the Aldridge estate gates. Police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder with every passing second.
Isadora stood on the elevated stage, clutching a microphone with shaking hands, desperately trying to restore order.
"Please! Everyone, stay calm!" she yelled into the mic, feedback screeching through the speakers. "There has merely been a minor security breach! A disgruntled former domestic worker has attempted to steal family heirlooms! My father’s team has the situation entirely under control!"
Suddenly, the massive audiovisual screens behind her—which had previously displayed romantic photo collages of Isadora and Gabriel to celebrate their impending engagement—flickered and cut to black.
A loud static hiss echoed through the state-of-the-art sound system.
"What is that?" Isadora gasped, looking up in panic. "Turn it off! Unplug it!"
The screens roared back to life. But it wasn't a family photo.
It was a live, crystal-clear feed from the underground server room.
The high-society crowd gasped collectively. On the forty-foot screen, Julian Beaumont was clearly visible on his hands and knees, bleeding from his broken knee, clutching the pant leg of the maid he had so often treated like dirt.
*"You always were careless, Julian,"* Marisol’s voice boomed through the ballroom's concert speakers with deafening clarity.
*"Arthur... you fool... you'll go down with me!"* Julian’s recorded voice echoed. *"You signed the clearance orders! I paid the examiner for the dental fragments!"*
Gasps turned into shrieks of disgust.
"My God," a prominent senator’s wife whispered, dropping her champagne flute. "He admitted it. He framed the Vance family."
Isadora dropped the microphone. It hit the stage with a thud that reverberated like a cannon shot. She stared at the screen, watching her father—the untouchable titan of high finance, the man who had bought her horses, penthouses, and diamonds—confessing to treason and murder before the very people whose validation she had spent her life chasing.
"No..." Isadora whimpered, covering her face. "No, no, no..."
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She turned to see the guests backing away from the stage as if she were carrying the plague. The women who had kissed her cheeks an hour ago now looked at her with pure revulsion. The men who had courted her father’s favor were already furiously deleting contacts from their phones.
The doors at the back of the ballroom slammed open.
