The sound was sharp. Dry. Violent.
So wrong for a place this beautiful that even the marble floors seemed offended.
I felt it in my jaw before I heard it — a sting that shot through my teeth as the noise bounced off glass walls and crystal chandeliers. For one suspended second, everything froze. The light. The silence. Even the fountain outside the floor-to-ceiling windows stopped sounding alive.
Victoria Blake stood in front of me, wrapped in a sky-blue designer dress that screamed money and control. Her eyes burned with the kind of rage only someone untouchable can afford. Her hand hovered near my cheek, still warm from the slap — like she might hit me again just to remind me she could.
I didn’t drop the silver tray.
Tea spilled from a shattered porcelain cup, bleeding slowly into a Persian rug that probably cost more than my first car. Two senior staff members stared at me, frozen, like they were watching a storm swallow a person whole.
Halfway down the curved marble staircase, Richard Blake stopped mid-step.
Disbelief tightened his face into something I’d never seen before on a billionaire.
Uncertainty.