Chapter 4 - THE SLAP
What happened next became the image every relative carried away from that party, though not all of them told the story honestly at first. Victoria moved fast, faster than anyone expected in heels on grass. She didn’t yell before she reached Claire. She didn’t argue. She didn’t ask a single question. She simply raised her hand and slapped Claire across the face hard enough to knock her cap sideways and send a ripple of shocked sound through the backyard. Claire stumbled back into the edge of the graduation cake table, one hand flying instinctively to protect the ring. For half a second the whole party seemed to stop breathing.
“You don’t get engaged without my permission,” Victoria snapped, her face bright with fury. “You still belong to this family!”
Claire tasted salt and shock more than pain, but something deeper hit harder than the blow itself. It was the nakedness of the control, the fact that Victoria was no longer even pretending. Mason was already moving. So was Claire, though in a more desperate way—trying to stay upright, trying to understand whether her father would step in, trying not to let the humiliation land before adrenaline replaced it. Victoria lunged again, this time for Claire’s wrist. Relatives recoiled rather than intervened. Richard said, “Victoria,” but in the useless tone of a man commenting on weather.
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Victoria got a grip on Claire’s hand and dug sharp nails against her skin as she clawed at the ring. “Give me that,” she hissed. “Do you hear me?” Claire jerked backward and nearly lost her footing again. “Let go of me,” she shouted, her voice cracking with rage. “I’m marrying him whether you like it or not!” Her father still did not move. The sight of him standing there, caught between his daughter and his wife and choosing stillness, hurt almost as much as the slap. If Victoria felt that collapse inside Claire, she mistook it for weakness. She pulled harder.
That was when Mason reached them. He took Victoria by the wrist and ripped her hand away from Claire’s ring finger with a force that made several relatives gasp out loud. Then he stepped directly in front of Claire and pushed her behind him. “Touch my fiancée again,” he said, low and steady enough to be more frightening than a yell, “and this party ends right now.” Victoria stared at him in disbelief, as if no man outside her own authority had ever addressed her as a threat. Claire put one hand on Mason’s back, and only then realized the world had started tilting.
