Chapter 4 - The Viper Strikes Back
By 2:00 AM, the story had already metastasized across the internet.
A guest at the gala had secretly recorded the entire confrontation on an iPhone 15 Pro, capturing the raw, brutal momentum of Margaret’s attack, the tray crashing onto the floor, Richard’s violent intervention, and his explosive declaration: *SHE’S MY LONG-LOST GRANDDAUGHTER!*
The video had garnered forty million views on TikTok and X in less than four hours. The comments were an inferno of public outrage demanding Margaret Whitmore’s immediate arrest for felony assault on a minor.
Across town, inside a palatial penthouse overlooking Park Avenue, Margaret Whitmore threw a crystal tumbler of scotch against a two-million-dollar oil painting.
The glass shattered, splashing amber liquor across the canvas.
"He can't do this!" Margaret screamed, her voice hoarse from hours of hysterical ranting. She paced the length of her minimalist living room, barefoot now, her emerald-green dress discarded on the floor like a dead snake. "He is an old, sentimental fool hallucinating ghosts! Clara died sixteen years ago! We made sure—"
"Shut your mouth, Margaret!"
Sitting at the leather desk was her husband, Arthur Whitmore, a man with thinning grey hair, cold sunken eyes, and the nervous sweat of a corrupt financier whose house of cards was burning down around his ears. He was staring at two open laptops displaying real-time financial readouts.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Arthur snarled, slamming his fist onto the mahogany desk. "Harrison Capital pulled their secondary liquidity line fifteen minutes ago! Our overseas accounts are frozen pending a federal compliance check! Richard didn't just kick you out of a party, you idiot—he’s executing a scorched-earth protocol!"
"Then we fight back!" Margaret hissed, her eyes wild with malice. She rushed toward the desk, gripping the edge of the screen. "Look at the girl, Arthur! She’s sixteen! She grew up in foster homes, group facilities, gutters! She’s probably got a juvenile record, petty theft, truant files! We call the press. We hire Bernstein Media. We tell them Richard Harrison has suffered a nervous breakdown and is being manipulated by a teenage grifter who bought a replica locket on eBay!"
Arthur paused. His calculating mind began to turn. "A smear campaign against a minor is risky. The internet already hates you."
"The internet has the attention span of a goldfish!" Margaret fired back, her lip curling into a venomous sneer. "By sunrise, I want every tabloid in the country running headlines calling her an impostor. We challenge the DNA in probate court. If we can tie up her legitimacy for six months, we can force a vote of no confidence against Richard on the board. We remove him as CEO before that little gutter rat ever touches a single share of stock!"
Arthur leaned back, his trembling fingers steepling over his stomach. "And what if the DNA comes back a match before morning?"
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Margaret leaned in close, her eyes narrowing until they were slits of pure poison. "Then we make sure the little waitress doesn't survive long enough to sign the trust documents."
***
