Chapter 5 - The Video on the Grand Screen
Dominic pulled a sleek titanium control unit from his pocket and paired it with the ballroom’s master audiovisual console.
The gigantic eighty-foot 8K digital projection screens suspended above the floral stage flickered for a single second.
Instead of the scheduled wedding photo montage celebrating Charlotte’s childhood, the screens illuminated with crisp, high-definition surveillance footage.
Projected across forty feet of brilliant display was the crystal-clear video captured on the terrace barely twenty minutes prior.
The audio boomed through the ballroom’s state-of-the-art surround sound system with terrifying, undeniable clarity.
On the screen, my father could be seen gripping my shoulders on the stone terrace, his face twisted in drunken, malicious rage.
”Stop sulking, Vivienne! You’re ruining the aesthetic of the family photos!” Charles’s recorded voice echoed through every speaker.
Then, the video showed him violently shoving me backward into the freezing fountain water.
The horrifying splash, followed by the sound of Charles laughing into his microphone and the four hundred guests clapping through the glass doors, filled the hall.
Several prominent politicians and corporate CEOs in the back rows buried their faces in their hands, squirming in profound, agonizing shame.
The live video feed had already been transmitted to the primary servers of the New York Times, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal.
Beneath the assault footage, a second digital window opened, displaying the authenticated banking ledgers of Sterling Enterprises.
The records clearly showed Charles diverting forty million dollars from my trust fund into an offshore shell entity to pay off his illegal gambling debts in Macau.
“You thought you could assault the wife of Dominic Vance in public and walk away with a laugh, Charles?” Dominic’s voice rang out like an executioner’s decree.
“Every major news outlet in North America is currently broadcasting your cruelty live to twenty million viewers.”
Charles’s legs buckled beneath him, his knees hitting the hardwood floor with a sickening thud as his entire reality collapsed.
The four hundred guests began scrambling frantically toward the main exits, terrified of being associated with the disgraced family as the media firestorm erupted outside.
Nobody offered Charles a hand.
Nobody helped Beatrice off her chair.
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Nobody cared about Charlotte’s tears.
The high-society wolves who had laughed at my humiliation were now trampling over each other to escape the wreckage of the Sterling name.
