Victoria's hands froze against the polished stone floor. She stared up at Ethan with wide, bloodshot eyes, her chest heaving beneath her diamond-encrusted bodice.
Victoria: What camera? The ballroom cameras were disconnected for the gala decorators!
Ethan: The ballroom security feeds were never disconnected, Victoria. I had them transferred to a private cloud server this morning.
Victoria: That's impossible! The decorators assured me the circuit breakers were pulled!
Clara: She paid the decorators five thousand dollars to cut the wires, Mr. Sterling.
Ethan stood up slowly, keeping one arm wrapped around Clara and his son.
Ethan: How do you know that, Clara?
Clara: I found the cash withdrawal slip in her vanity trash can while cleaning the master suite yesterday.
Victoria: You went through my private trash?! You thieving servant!
Ethan: Shut your mouth, Victoria! Chief Miller, bring the surveillance tablet here!
Chief Miller stepped forward across the marble, handing a heavy black tablet directly to Ethan.
Miller: The backup system captured the entire incident in 4K resolution, sir. Audio is crystal clear.
Ethan tapped the glass screen, turning the tablet so the entire ballroom could see the playback. The guests crowded forward, gasping in collective horror as the high-definition video began to roll.
On the screen, Victoria stood beneath the American flag, her face contorted in vicious rage as she held baby Toby out. Her recorded voice blasted through the tablet speakers with terrifying clarity: "GET RID OF IT!"
Then came the horrific overhand throw, followed by Clara's desperate slide across the floor to catch the child inches from disaster.
Guest A: Good God! She literally threw an infant like a piece of garbage!
Guest B: Disgraceful... absolute monster! Arrest her!
Victoria: Stop playing that! Turn it off! That video is an AI-generated deepfake created to ruin my reputation!
Ethan: You think a deepfake can replicate your exact voice and dress in real time, Victoria?
Victoria: Ethan, listen to reason! I was overwhelmed! Post-traumatic stress from planning this massive wedding!
Ethan: You aren't stressed, Victoria. You're greedy. You wanted Toby dead before Friday so you could claim my family's sixty-million-dollar trust fund!
Victoria backed against the base of a white marble pillar, her diamond jewelry clicking against the stone.
Victoria: That trust fund belongs to the primary wife! Your late wife Sarah left that money to be managed by whoever runs this estate!
Ethan: Sarah left that trust fund to our biological child, under the sole guardianship of his father!
Clara: And she left a secondary sealed letter with her attorney in Dallas, Mr. Sterling.
Victoria's head snapped toward Clara, her jaw dropping open in utter panic.
Victoria: What letter?! Sarah never wrote a secondary letter!
Clara: She wrote it three days before the car crash that took her life. She gave a copy to my mother.
Ethan stared down at Clara, his brow furrowing in deep confusion.
Ethan: To your mother? Clara, what does your mother have to do with Sarah's estate?
Clara: My mother was Sarah's personal nurse at the Dallas clinic, Mr. Sterling. Sarah knew Victoria was poisoning her food months before the crash.
The entire room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Ethan took a slow, menacing step toward Victoria, his voice dropping into a dark, lethal whisper.
Ethan: You poisoned my wife, Victoria?
Victoria: That's a slanderous lie! Sarah died of natural heart failure! The coroner signed the death certificate!
Clara: The coroner received a two-hundred-thousand-dollar wire transfer from your offshore account in Nassau forty-eight hours after Sarah died, Victoria.
Victoria let out a strangled shriek, her fingernails digging frantically into her pink silk skirt.
Victoria: How do you know about Nassau?! Who gave you my bank files?!
Clara: The state prosecutor gave them to me thirty minutes ago, Victoria. And the police are already standing at the front gates.