Chapter 6 - The Four Seconds
The silver bucket is tipped.
Two gallons of melting ice, heavy cream, and sugary syrup spilled downward toward Walter Bennett's head.
The crowd gasped. Several society women shrieked, shielding their designer dresses. Flashbulbs strobed in a frantic frenzy, capturing the falling white liquid in mid-air.
Nathaniel froze, his hand outstretched toward his father, his brain unable to process the surreal physics of what was happening.
Rosa died.
She crossed the ballroom floor in one desperation, flying leap. She threw herself directly over Walter Bennett, taking the brunt of the freezing avalanche across her back and shoulders.
Splash.
The heavy silver bucket crashed onto the marble floor with a deafening clang that echoed through the silent hall.
Ice cubes scattered across the polished stone. Freezing cream soaked through Rosa's black uniform dress, plastering the fabric against her skin and chilling her to the bone.
For three seconds, absolute, tomb-like silence gripped the five hundred guests.
Then the camera shutters resumed —clack, clack, clack —firing at ten frames per second, recording every detail of the dripping old man, the freezing maid, and the horrified, paralyzed fiancée standing above them with an empty silver bucket in her manicured hands.
Nathaniel finally snaps out of his trance. He dropped to his knees in the puddle of cream, ignoring his expensive Italian suit trousers.
“Dad! Dad, are you—?” Nathaniel staggered, grabbing his father's shoulders.
Walter slowly opened his eyes. He wasn't wet; Rosa's body had completely shielded him. He looked past his son's panic-stricken face, straight at Victoria Hale.
Victoria stood frozen, the empty silver bucket dangling from her trembling fingers, her ivory silk gown immaculate while the woman on the floor shivered in the freezing dairy.
“What... what did you do?” Nathaniel whined, staring up at Victoria with horror dawning in his eyes.
“It... it was an accident!” Victoria stammered, her voice cracking as fifty smartphones recorded her face in high definition. “The ice... the tray slipped! I didn't mean—!”
“You meant to humiliate him,” a quiet, steady voice spoke from the floor.
Rosa pushed herself up from Walter's lap, shivering violently as cold cream dripped from her hair onto the marble. She didn't look down. She looked straight into Victoria Hale's disenchanted eyes.
“You wanted to break him,” Rosa said, her voice carried clearly across the silent ballroom without the aid of a microphone. “Because you were afraid of what he was going to say on that stage.”
“Shut up, you—you hired help!” Victoria shrieked, losing all her corporate composure. “Security! Get this cleaning woman out of here! Drag her out!”
Not a single security guard moved.
Miller, the head of security, stared at Victoria with undisguised disdain, keeping his hands firmly at his sides.
Nathaniel slowly stood up, towering over Victoria. His face had gone chalk-white.
“Security,” Nathaniel said, his voice shaking with a rage his fiancée had never heard before. “Escort Ms. Hale from the building. Make sure her bags are thrown onto the street by midnight.”
“Nathaniel, you can't—we're getting married in three weeks! The board—the merger!” Victoria screamed as two massive security guards grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her backward toward the service exit while flashbulbs blinded her.
As the heavy oak doors closed behind Victoria's hysterics, the ballroom remained dead silent.
Nathaniel turned back to his father, holding out a trembling hand. “Dad... I'm so sorry. I had no idea... she was under so much stress—”
Walter didn't take his son's hand.
Instead, with surprising strength, Walter gripped the armrests of his wheelchair and pushed himself up, standing unsteadily on his feet for the first time in public in eighteen months.
The entire ballroom gasped.
Walter looked down at his lipstick, his eyes burning with cold, absolute fury.
“You brought a viper into our home, Nathaniel,” Walter said, his voice ringing across the silent hall. “And you were so busy counting money that you let her poison everything we built.”
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Nathaniel stared at his father in shock. “Dad... sit down. Let's talk about this in the private office—”
“There is nothing to talk about in private,” Walter interrupted, turning his head toward the back of the room where his legal counsel stood holding a leather briefcase. “Mr. Henderson, bring out the documents.”
