Chapter 4 - The House of Cards
Gasps ripped through the thirty-eight women seated around the long banquet table. Several of them instinctively recoiled from Beatrice as though she were carrying a contagious disease, while others began frantically reaching for their designer purses, looking around the room for the nearest emergency exit.
"You... you can't do this!" Beatrice sputtered, her face flushing an ugly, mottled shade of crimson that clashed violently with her silk blouse. Her voice cracked, losing its aristocratic composure entirely. "My son gave you everything! You're nothing without the Whitaker family name! You're a nobody!"
"Your son gave me nothing but a perpetual migraine and a mountain of legal bills," I corrected coldly.
I turned my head and gave a sharp, decisive nod to Gavin, who had been hovering near the service bar watching the exchange with undisguised, ecstatic glee. Gavin didn't walk—he practically glided across the floor, carrying a sleek black leather checkbook presenter containing the itemized receipt. He walked straight up to Beatrice and placed it squarely in front of her wine glass, right on top of the soiled napkin.
"What is this rubbish?" Beatrice demanded, her voice trembling as her hands shook violently in her lap.
"That," I replied cheerfully, stepping back and folding my arms across my chest, "is the itemized bill for today’s extraordinary, high-society feast."
Beatrice stared down at the black leather folder as if it were a venomous timber rattlesnake coiled on the linen. With trembling fingers, she opened it and looked at the grand total printed at the bottom.
"Twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars," she whispered, the color draining entirely from her face. "Including an automatic twenty percent service gratuity for my staff who had to put up with your arrogant, abusive attitude today," I added helpfully.
"I'm not paying this!" Beatrice shrieked, slamming her hand down on the table so hard her crystal wine glass rattled against the silver. "I told you clearly when I walked through those doors! I eat here for free! Everyone at this table heard me announce it's my treat!"
"No, Beatrice," I said, leaning over the table so she had to look directly into the absolute, unyielding finality of my eyes. "You announced, loudly and proudly in front of thirty-eight independent witnesses, plus my entire front-of-house staff, that today's meal was your treat. That constitutes a verbal contract under commercial dining laws. You invited them, you ordered the menu, and you claimed the tab."
I paused, letting the legal reality sink into her panicking mind.
"If you cannot settle this bill in full right now, Gavin will call the Ashford County Sheriff's Department and press formal charges for defrauding an innkeeper and theft of services—which, at this dollar amount, constitutes a felony offense."
Absolute panic seized the table. Beatrice looked wildly around at her friends—the very women she had spent the entire afternoon trying to impress with her fabricated wealth and social dominance.
"Darlings, surely we can split this among ourselves?" Beatrice pleaded, her voice cracking with desperation as she grabbed the arm of the woman in the emerald silk blouse. "It's just a minor misunderstanding with the management—"
The woman violently jerked her arm away from Beatrice's grip.
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"Don't you dare touch me, Beatrice," the woman hissed, standing up so abruptly her chair scraped loudly against the hardwood floor. "You explicitly told us it was your treat. You bragged about owning this place through your family. I am certainly not paying a single dime for your fraudulent behavior and stolen wine. Good luck explaining this to the police."
One by one, the thirty-eight women stood up. They practically tripped over their designer heels and Gucci loafers in their frantic rush to distance themselves from the crumbling matriarch. Purses were slung over shoulders, coats were snatched from the backs of chairs, and within sixty seconds, the once-bustling royal court had evaporated into thin air, leaving Beatrice sitting entirely alone at a massive banquet table littered with the expensive wreckage of a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar meal.
