Chapter 2 - BEHIND THE TORN BACKDROP
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Maya did not look at Evelyn again.
She slipped one arm around Vivian’s shoulders and shouted for an ambulance with a voice that cut through the panic. The nearest guests moved back, giving them air, while a doctor attending the party pushed through the crowd and knelt beside the sisters.
Vivian’s breathing was shallow. She kept asking the same question.
“Is the baby moving?”
The doctor asked her not to stand.
Maya held Vivian’s hand so tightly their knuckles whitened together. She forced herself to stay calm, though the sight of blood against Vivian’s pale dress made every protective instinct inside her feel like fire.
Security finally reached Evelyn.
She was standing near the collapsed photo set, one hand braced against a broken frame. For a moment, she seemed less like a powerful socialite and more like someone astonished that the room had stopped obeying her.
“Get away from me,” she snapped when a guard approached.
Nobody listened.
The crowd had changed.
Only minutes earlier, guests had laughed too loudly at Evelyn’s jokes and stepped aside when she passed. Now they watched her with the cold attention reserved for someone whose power had suddenly become uncertain.
The ambulance team entered through the garden doors.
They moved quickly, checking Vivian’s blood pressure and asking precise questions. One paramedic placed a monitor against her abdomen while the other prepared a stretcher.
Then a fast, steady heartbeat filled the silence.
Vivian closed her eyes.
Maya bent forward until her forehead touched her sister’s temple.
The baby was alive.
The relief lasted only seconds. The paramedic warned that bleeding during late pregnancy required immediate evaluation. Vivian could still be facing placental complications, premature labor, or internal injury.
“We’re going now,” he said.
As they lifted Vivian, a man pushed through the crowd from the main entrance.
Daniel Vale had arrived.
His tuxedo jacket was open, his tie loosened, and his expression shifted from confusion to terror the moment he saw the stretcher.
“Vivian?”
She turned her head toward him.
The disappointment in her eyes hurt more than any accusation.
Daniel reached for her hand, but the paramedics were already moving. “What happened?”
Maya answered before Vivian could.
“Your mother happened.”
Daniel stopped.
Across the destroyed showroom, Evelyn stared at her son.
“Daniel, this is being exaggerated.”
He looked at the blood on Vivian’s dress.
Then he looked at the bent clothing rack on the floor.
“Exaggerated?”
Evelyn raised her chin. “She threatened this family.”
“She is this family.”
The words landed quietly, but the room heard them.
Maya followed the stretcher. Daniel went with them, leaving Evelyn behind with security and dozens of witnesses.
Outside, rain had started over Manhattan. Flashing ambulance lights painted the building facade red and white while photographers gathered behind barricades, already sensing that the fashion story of the evening had become something far darker.
Inside the ambulance, Vivian gripped Daniel’s hand but did not speak.
He wanted to apologize, yet he did not know where to begin.
For months, Vivian had told him Evelyn was becoming more hostile. Daniel had minimized it. He had called it stress, grief, pressure, generational conflict—anything that allowed him to avoid choosing a side.
Now there was no middle.
At the hospital, Vivian was taken directly to obstetric emergency care.
Daniel and Maya waited beneath harsh fluorescent lights while rain streaked the windows. Neither of them sat.
Finally, an obstetrician entered.
“The baby’s heartbeat is stable,” she said.
Daniel exhaled so hard his shoulders folded.
“But Vivian has signs of placental irritation and early contractions. We’re admitting her for monitoring. If the bleeding increases, we may need to deliver early.”
Maya closed her eyes.
Daniel asked the only question he could manage.
“Can I see her?”
The doctor nodded.
Vivian lay beneath a white blanket with monitors attached around her abdomen. The room smelled of antiseptic and warm plastic. Her face looked exhausted, but when Daniel entered, her gaze was clear.
He sat beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
Vivian stared at the ceiling.
“I warned you.”
“I know.”
“I told you she was getting worse.”
“I know.”
“I told you she was hiding things.”
Daniel looked at her then. “What things?”
Vivian turned her head slowly.
“The charity accounts.”
Maya, standing near the door, stiffened.
Vivian explained the missing invoices, the private account, the authorization numbers, and the encrypted drive. She told him she had planned to show everything after the anniversary event.
Daniel listened without interrupting.
His face grew colder with every sentence.
“Where’s the drive?”
Vivian looked toward Maya.
“In the lining of my black clutch.”
Maya shook her head. “Your clutch was near the photo backdrop.”
All three of them fell silent.
The torn set.
The toppled lights.
The scattered dresses.
And Evelyn had been standing there after the attack.
Daniel reached for his phone.
Before he could call security, Maya remembered something else.
“The camera.”
“What camera?”
“There was a small event camera behind the backdrop. I saw the recording light after it fell.”
Daniel frowned. “Vale Atelier doesn’t place cameras behind photo paper.”
“Then someone else did.”
The implication settled over the room.
If the hidden camera had captured the attack, Evelyn could not dismiss what happened as an accident.
If it had been placed there earlier, it might have recorded more than the attack.
Daniel called the venue manager and ordered the entire photo area sealed.
Ten minutes later, the answer came back.
The hidden camera was gone.
So was Vivian’s black clutch.
Maya paced to the window. “She took them.”
Daniel shook his head slowly. “Security has her downstairs. She hasn’t left the building.”
“Then someone took them for her.”
Vivian shut her eyes as another contraction tightened across her abdomen. The monitor changed rhythm.
Daniel immediately moved closer.
The nurse entered, adjusted the equipment, and asked Vivian to breathe slowly.
When the pain eased, Vivian looked at Daniel.
“This is bigger than your mother being angry.”
He knew she was right.
At the fashion venue, detectives had arrived. Guests were being interviewed separately. Security footage from the main atrium showed the attack clearly from a distance, but the angle near the backdrop was partially blocked by mannequins.
Then a young photographer named Lucas Bell approached an officer.
He had been shooting candid footage for a behind-the-scenes documentary.
His camera had recorded Evelyn confronting Vivian before the first strike.
More importantly, Lucas remembered seeing someone behind the photography wall ten minutes before the attack.
A man in a gray suit.
He had no event badge.
And he had been handling a small camera.
Back at the hospital, Daniel received the information by phone.
Maya watched his expression tighten.
“Who was he?”
“They don’t know yet.”
Vivian opened her eyes.
“Check the vendor list.”
Daniel looked at her.
“The money didn’t move by itself,” she said. “Someone helped her.”
The police sent over a still image from Lucas’s footage.
The man’s face was half turned, but Daniel recognized him immediately.
His name was Grant Mercer.
He had worked as the Vale family’s private financial consultant for twelve years.
And according to Daniel, Grant was supposed to be in London.
Maya looked from the photograph to Vivian.
“That camera wasn’t there by accident.”
Vivian’s hand moved instinctively over her belly.
Neither was the attack, she thought.
At that exact moment, the baby kicked.
Vivian began to cry—not from pain this time, but from relief.
Daniel covered her hand with his.
For the first time that night, the three of them sat together without speaking.
Outside, thunder rolled over the city.
At the ruined fashion venue, detectives opened a service door behind the photography area.
On the floor inside was Vivian’s black clutch.
The lining had been cut open.
May you like
The encrypted drive was missing.
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