Chapter 7 - The Screen Plays
The four massive projection screens on either side of the ballroom stage flickered to life.
These screens had been installed to show a romantic montage of Sutton and Alden’s courtship—pictures of them on yachts in Cabo, sipping wine in Napa, smiling against sunsets.
Instead, the crystal-clear 4K video from Briany’s iPhone illuminated the room in stark, unforgiving brilliance.
The audio boomed through the ballroom's high-definition surround-sound system, every syllable crystal clear:
*“Get the wide shot, Briany. I’m going to clip her leg when I walk by. The second she starts tumbling, zoom in on her face. If she cries and makes an ugly scene, this reel is going to hit ten million views by midnight...”*
On the eighty-inch monitors, fifty guests watched in stunned, paralyzed horror as Sutton appeared on the staircase.
They watched her smile for the camera.
They watched her deliberately speed up her pace.
They watched her left stiletto hook directly behind my uninjured ankle while her right shoulder slammed violently into my upper back, sending my wooden crutch clattering against the marble balustrade.
They watched my body twist in midair.
They heard the wet, sickening *CRACK* of my titanium plate snapping and the bone fragmenting.
And then, in high-definition slow motion, the screens showed Sutton’s face.
She wasn't gasping. She wasn't reaching out to help.
Her head was thrown back. Her mouth was open in a wide, triumphant, joyous laugh.
*“It was just for content, you guys! Fallon, honestly! Why are you just lying there crying for attention? Get up!”*
The video cut to black.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the kind of silence that feels heavy enough to crush bones.
Not a single person breathed.
On stage, Stellin Ward had dropped his scotch glass. The amber liquid was spreading across the cream carpet, soaking into the hem of his trousers. His face was no longer gray; it was an ashen, mottled white, the color of wet cement.
Althia was trembling so violently she had to grip the back of a Chiavari chair to keep from falling.
Sutton stood in the center of the aisle, her chest heaving, looking around at the sea of horrified, disgusted faces. People she had bragged to for six months—influencer peers, Alden’s wealthy relatives, high-profile donors—were looking at her like she was a venomous snake that had crawled out of a sewer.
"It... it was a joke," Sutton whimpered, her voice suddenly small, shrill, and entirely devoid of its theatrical polish. "It was just a social media trend. People do pranks all the time... Fallon knows I didn't mean to really hurt her..."
"Shut up," Alden whispered.
The word cut through her stammering like a razor.
"Alden—"
"Shut your mouth," he repeated, his fists clenching at his sides. "You crippled your own sister for views on the internet. You stole her company's money to pay for a room you couldn't afford. And then you stood here and expected me to marry you?"
Alden reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the heavy platinum wedding band that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and let it drop onto the carpet at Sutton’s feet.
"The engagement is over," Alden said, loud enough for every guest to hear. "The Montgomery trust is formally invoking the breach of contract and moral turpitude clause. You and your family owe our trust two hundred thousand dollars in liquidated damages by five o'clock tomorrow, or my mother's firm will file a lien on your parents' house."
"No!" Stellin choked out, stumbling down from the stage. "Richard! Eleanor! Please! We didn't know! We were misled! This is between the girls!"
"Your signature is on the fraudulent credit card voucher as a secondary witness, Stellin," Vesper Vance announced, her voice slicing through the room with the lethal precision of a scalpel.
Vesper stepped forward, opening her heavy black binder and holding up a certified bank document.
"At 8:14 PM yesterday," Vesper stated, addressing the entire room, "Miss Sutton Ward used an illegally obtained corporate credit card belonging to *AeroTech Logistics Solutions* to process forty-two thousand, five hundred dollars in unauthorized charges. At 8:22 PM, Stellin Ward signed the physical merchant receipt at the concierge desk verifying the authorization, fully aware that the account did not belong to him."
Stellin looked like he was having a heart attack. He clutched his left arm, his eyes bulging. "I... I thought Fallon approved it! My wife told me Fallon approved it!"
"You didn't care who approved it, Stellin," I spoke up.
The sound of my voice made him flinch.
I pressed the joystick on my wheelchair, rolling myself forward until I was ten feet away from my father, my mother, and my sister.
"You never cared," I said, my voice steady, clear, and resonant in the cavernous room. "You didn't care when I worked seventy hours a week through college to pay my own tuition while you bought Sutton a new BMW. You didn't care when I spent three weeks in the ICU two months ago after an aircraft engine door collapsed on me. You didn't care when I was lying at the bottom of those stairs last night, bleeding through my dress, begging you to call an ambulance."
"Fallon, darling, please..." Althia wept, her hands fluttering helplessly. "We're your parents... we love you..."
"You called me an energy vampire, Mom," I said coldly. "You told Sutton to make sure she didn't tear her dress while she shoved me. I have the group chat transcripts. The Secret Service has them. The county prosecutor has them."
I turned my eyes to Sutton, who was trembling, tears of pure humiliation streaming down her ruined makeup.
"You wanted ten million views, Sutton?" I asked softly.
She swallowed hard, incapable of speaking.
May you like
"Deputy Miller," I said, without looking away from her. "Execute the warrant."
***
