Chapter 8 - The Billionaire’s Wrath
“Nathaniel, you’re making a scene!” Victoria hissed, her voice cracking with rising hysteria as she clutched her diamond necklace. “Think of our engagement! Think of what the papers will say tomorrow! You can’t throw me out over a broken doll!”
Nathaniel took two measured steps toward her, his expression so devoid of human warmth that Victoria actually stumbled back against the pink birthday table, sending a plate of untouched cake sliding onto the floor.
“The papers will say whatever my PR firm tells them to say, Victoria,” Nathaniel said quietly. “And as for our engagement... let us review what else I’ve been thinking about over the last forty-eight hours.”
With his free hand, Nathaniel reached into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a thick manila folder stamped with the seal of Whitfield Enterprises Legal Division.
Victoria stared at the folder, her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes went wide with sudden, unadulterated panic.
“No,” she whispered. “You... you didn't.”
“Your father’s hedge fund didn't fail because of bad market conditions, did it, Victoria?” Nathaniel asked, his voice carrying clearly across the silent ballroom. “It failed because your brother embezzled twelve million dollars from client trust accounts to fund a lifestyle of private jets and high-stakes poker in Monaco.”
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Several prominent bankers in the front rows stiffened instantly.
“You came to me six months ago,” Nathaniel continued, stepping closer, holding the folder up for all to see. “You wept in this very library. You begged me to bail out your family, to settle your father’s debts, to buy your silence and your pedigree in exchange for my name and my ring. I agreed. Not because I loved you, Victoria—God help me, I was too broken inside to love anyone—but because I thought you possessed basic human decency.”
Victoria was shaking so violently now that her emerald silk gown rustled against the floor. Tears of pure rage and humiliation spilled over her mascara-lined lashes. “You’re destroying me over a maid’s bastard? You’re throwing away our entire world for a kitchen servant?!”
“She is not a servant,” Nathaniel said, his voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying hum. “And you are not fit to breathe the same air as the people who keep this house alive.”
Nathaniel turned his head slightly, locking eyes with Mateo by the doorway.
“Mateo.”
“Boss?”
“Escort Ms. Hale off the property.”
“Gladly,” Mateo smiled, stepping forward with two security guards behind him.
“Don’t touch me!” Victoria shrieked, backing away until the edge of the pink birthday table jammed painfully into her lower back. She pointed a shaking, manicured finger at Nathaniel, her face twisting into an ugly mask of pure hatred. “You think you’ve won?! Everyone in New York will laugh at you! They’ll say the great Nathaniel Whitfield was brought to his knees by a cleaning woman and her brat! You’ll never be accepted—!”
Before she could finish, Victoria made a desperate lunge past Mateo toward the main exit doors.
Mateo didn't even draw a weapon; he simply stepped into her path, grabbed her firmly by the upper arm with professional, unyielding force, and steered her smoothly toward the grand double doors. The two security guards fell in step behind her, forming an escort of absolute disgrace.
As the heavy mahogany doors swung open to reveal the cold Long Island night outside, Victoria let out one final, shrieking curse that echoed off the crystal chandeliers.
May you like
Then the doors slammed shut.
The ballroom was left in a silence so profound you could hear the wind howling against the bulletproof glass of the windows.
