Chapter 4 - The Six-Second WarNearly two hundred pairs of eyes shifted between the billionaire’s fiancée on the stairs and the humble maid standing beneath the crystal arch.
Grace didn't smile. She didn't cower.
Her eyes scanned the crowd with cold, tactical precision, ignoring Victoria entirely. She tracked movement by the northern gallery doors, where a shadow was slipping past the security perimeter.
It was him. The man from the study.
And he was drawing a weapon.
“Get down!” Grace’s voice cut through the ballroom like a whip.
Before anyone could process the warning, the stranger whipped his right hand out from beneath his black catering jacket. The dull, lethal gleam of a suppressed pistol caught the chandelier light.
Time seemed to fracture, stretching out into agonizing slow motion.
Guests gasped, freezing like statues of salt. Politicians dropped their champagne flutes, shattering crystal across the imported Italian marble. Julian Mercer lunged forward, his instincts roaring to life, but he was too far away—at least thirty feet separate him from the threat.
Grace dropped the silver case. It hit the marble with a dull, heavy thud.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't calculate the risk to her job, her reputation, or her life.
She sprinted across the polished floor, her flat service shoes gripping the marble with explosive acceleration. As she closed the distance, she launched herself into a flying side-kick, her body parallel to the floor, propelled by years of muscle memory and raw, unadulterated fury.
Crack.
The sound of her heel striking the gunman’s wrist echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling with the force of a pistol shot.
The firearm spun out of his grip, clattering across the floor and sliding deep beneath a mahogany banquet table laden with silver chafing dishes.
The momentum of the kick carried Grace through, slamming the assassin directly into a towering, seven-tier champagne pyramid.
Glass shattered in a deafening cascade. Flutes rained down like sparkling shrapnel as the man crashed into the wreckage, sending rivers of expensive French bubbly splashing across the floor.
Silence descended upon the ballroom—a heavy, suffocating stillness broken only by the steady drumbeat of rain outside.
And then, a voice rang out from the grand staircase.
It wasn’t Julian. It wasn’t a security guard.
It was Victoria.
May you like
Pale, trembling, and staring down at the groaning assassin buried under shards of glass, Victoria whispered a single name before anyone else in the mansion had even realized the man’s identity.
“Damon?”
