Chapter 1 - Send the Packet Now
Frank slammed his daughter’s face into the marble floor because she refused to ask her groom for thirty thousand dollars.
The ballroom heard the impact before anyone understood what had happened.
One second, Lena was standing beside the head table in her white lace wedding gown, bouquet trembling in one hand, brunette bridal updo pinned beneath a veil.
The next, her father’s fist was buried in the back of her hair.
Frank yanked hard.
Lena grabbed his forearm with both hands, trying to keep her balance.
“Ask him for the thirty thousand,” Frank growled.
Then he drove her downward.
Her knees buckled.
Her bouquet scattered across the marble.
White roses slid under gold chairs.
Lena’s cheek and nose struck the polished floor in one brutal motion.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
A thin line of blood appeared beneath her nose.
Her lip trembled.
Her face began to swell.
Frank stood over her in a black tuxedo and white boutonniere, broad shoulders tight with fury, gray hair perfectly combed as if he had not just hurt his own daughter in front of three hundred wedding guests.
Patricia, Lena’s mother, stood behind him in a silver formal gown.
She did not scream.
She did not run to her daughter.
She smiled.
Cold.
Approving.
As if Frank had finally corrected a problem that had embarrassed them for too long.
Daniel surged forward.
The groom’s black tuxedo blurred past the head table.
He caught Frank’s wrist and tore his hand away from Lena’s hair with such force that Frank stumbled back one hard step.
Daniel dropped beside Lena, shaking with rage, but he did not touch her injured face.
“Lena,” he said, voice breaking. “Look at me.”
Lena gasped on the floor, one hand covering her nose.
Frank straightened his jacket and looked down at her.
“Then stay where you belong.”
Lena’s eyes opened.
Pain made them wet.
Fear made them wide.
But underneath both, something else stayed sharp.
She looked at Daniel.
“No,” she whispered.
Daniel bent closer.
Lena grabbed his tuxedo sleeve and pulled him down until his ear was beside her mouth.
The camera of the room pushed closer to her tearful face.
Four words left her lips.
“Send the packet now.”
Daniel froze for half a second.
Then he understood.
He reached for his phone.
Frank’s smug expression twitched.
Patricia lifted her champagne glass, still smiling, like this was all some temporary family unpleasantness that wealth and silence would clean up later.
Daniel unlocked his phone and pressed one prepared button.
A partial status appeared on the screen.
Secure files sending…
Frank saw it.
His smile died.
Patricia’s glass lowered slowly.
May you like
Lena, still on the marble, breathing through pain, watched fear finally enter her parents’ faces.
That was when the ballroom realized something far worse than a family argument had just been exposed.
