Don’t you dare call an ambulance and ruin this party with flashing lights!” My father dragged my bleeding, broken body into the shadows while my spine shattered on the marble, unaware that his stolen sixty-thousand-dollar corporate fraud would soon land him in federal prison.

“An Uber?” Merrick asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the room with the dry precision of an appellate judge.

Deline blinked, her smile tightening at the edges. “Yes, darling. You know how fragile she is since her little accident in Chicago. She was so embarrassed about causing a scene that she begged Daddy to let her leave quietly through the service exit.”

“That’s interesting,” Merrick said, rising from his chair. He was six-foot-two, with broad shoulders and an air of quiet, absolute command that made Arthur immediately stop chewing. “Because Sloan left her handbag in the reception coat check. And when I went out to the terrace five minutes ago to check on the noise I heard earlier, the tempered glass safety rail was fractured into the foyer.

And there was a smear of arterial blood across the steps.”

Arthur’s face drained of color. “Merrick, my boy, she just scraped her knee, that’s all! You know how women can be—”

Before Arthur could finish the sentence, the heavy double doors of the banquet hall banged open with a violent shudder that silenced the entire room.

General Manager Henderson sprinted in, his face pale as parchment, accompanied by four uniform patrol officers and three paramedics pushing an emergency spine-board stretcher, their heavy equipment bags clattering loudly against their turnouts.

“What is the meaning of this?” Julian Vanderhaar, Merrick’s father and the chief private equity magnate in the region, stood up in outrage. “Henderson, what are you doing bringing paramedics into our private dining room?”

“Mr. Vanderhaar… Merrick…” Henderson gasped,

pointing a trembling hand back toward the foyer. “She’s in the service closet. She’s locked inside.”

Merrick didn’t wait. He vaulted over the low railing separating the banquet platform from the main floor, his polished dress shoes hitting the marble at a dead sprint.

“Merrick, stop!” Deline screamed, her voice losing its melodic veneer, cracking into shrill panic. “Merrick, it’s nothing! She’s crazy! She’s trying to ruin my wedding!”

Arthur leaped up to intercept him, his face contorted in sheer terror. “Merrick! Son, as her father, I demand you stay out of our private family matters!”

Merrick didn’t even slow down. As Arthur reached out to grab his lapel, Merrick drove his forearm into Arthur’s chest with the force of a former collegiate rower, sending my fifty-eight-year-old father sprawling backward across a champagne cart,

sending flutes, ice, and magnum bottles crashing onto the floor in a cascading explosion of glass.

“Get out of my way,” Merrick growled.

He reached the concealed service door beneath the mezzanine stairs. The brass handle was locked tight.

“Key! Now!” Merrick roared at Henderson.

“I—I don’t have the maintenance master, it’s—”

Merrick didn’t wait for the key. He stepped back two paces, braced his frame, and drove his right heel directly into the lock mechanism beside the frame. The heavy wooden casing splintered. He kicked it a second time, a third time, his teeth bared, until the latch tore through the framing and the door swung open.

The stench hit them first: the sharp, metallic odor of fresh blood, ozone, and the cold despair of a crawlspace.

The beam of a tactical flashlight from the lead officer sliced through the darkness.

There I lay.

My lips were blue, my cheek pressed against the filth of the concrete subfloor. My gown was soaked through with blood from the jagged shard of my back brace that had gouged into my flank. My eyes were half-open, glazed, tracking the beam of light with the faint, fluttering movements of someone entering irreversible hypovolemic shock.

“Sloan!” Merrick fell to his knees in the dust, completely uncaring that the pooled blood instantly soaked through the knees of his bespoke trousers. He hovered his hands over me, afraid to touch, afraid that the slightest pressure would finish the job my family had started. “Sloan, can you hear me?”

“Merrick…” My voice was a dry, rattling rasp, no louder than the rustle of dead leaves. “Can’t… move. T-7… displaced. Deline… pushed… Arthur… locked…”

“I know. Don’t speak. Don’t move a single muscle,” Merrick commanded, his voice shaking with a terrifying, lethal rage. He looked up at the paramedics crowding the doorway. “Spinal collar! Full immobilization board! She has a catastrophic thoracic injury! Move, damn you!”

Behind the paramedics, Deline and Una appeared.

Deline had her hands over her face, feigning hysterical grief, but her fingers were parted, her eyes darting over my bleeding body with furious calculations.

“Oh, Sloan! How did you get in here?” Deline wailed for the benefit of the guests who had spilled out of the dining room into the hallway. “Why did you hide in the closet? She’s out of her mind, Merrick! She crawled in here to make us look bad! She’s sick!”