Chapter 5
The bright, natural lighting of the ballroom seemed to focus entirely on the two figures standing near the center of the room. The white American guests watched in horrified fascination, unable to tear their eyes away from the brewing storm.
Victoria, mistaking Alexander’s silence for submission, reached her hands out aggressively, attempting to grab Sophia’s bare, dirty leg to physically pull the child out of her son's arms.
"Give her to me this instant," Victoria demanded.
Alexander’s reaction was instantaneous, explosive, and executed with a terrifying, controlled precision.
He smoothly shifted Sophia higher onto his left shoulder, ensuring she was completely secure and out of the line of fire. With his right hand free, Alexander rushed forward. He drew his arm back and slapped Victoria hard across the face.
The sound of the impact cracked through the silent ballroom like a thunderclap.
The sheer, overwhelming force of the blow lifted the seventy-year-old woman completely off her elegant heels. Victoria spun violently backward, entirely out of control, her arms flailing helplessly through the bright, cinematic air.
She hurtled backward toward the center of the room and crashed catastrophically into the towering, multi-tiered gala cake.
The massive dessert exploded upon impact. Layers of pristine white frosting, dense cake, and elaborate sugar flowers burst outward in every direction. The heavy table beneath the cake buckled, sending silver platters and crystal plates crashing to the marble floor. Victoria collapsed into the ruined mess, her emerald evening gown instantly coated in thick, sticky frosting and shattered cake tiers.
A massive, unified gasp ripped through the crowd of gala guests. Women covered their mouths in shock, and men instinctively took a step backward.
Alexander stood over his fallen mother. His tailored formal suit was smeared with soot from his daughter, his chest heaving. His eyes were blazing with a terrifying, unadulterated fire, yet his posture remained rigidly controlled. He was not a man who had lost his mind; he was a man executing absolute, righteous judgment.
"What happened to the money I send home every month?" Alexander bellowed, his deep, powerful voice booming with absolute fury, shaking the very crystal of the chandeliers above.
Victoria groaned from the floor, struggling to push herself up onto her elbows. Frosting smeared her fair, rosy face, completely ruining her expensive makeup. Her pearl necklace had snapped during the fall, and loose pearls were bouncing across the marble floor.
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"Alexander, have you lost your mind?!" Victoria shrieked, spitting cake from her lips, her American accent shrill and hysterical. "You struck your own mother!"
"I send three hundred thousand dollars a month to that estate!" Alexander roared, taking a threatening step forward. "To pay for her tutors! Her clothes! Her chefs! Where is it, Victoria? Why is my daughter digging for chicken bones in a hotel dumpster?!"
