“She also whispered that you didn’t love us anymore and that we should just disappear so you could move on.”
Something inside Victor, the part of him that had been cold and businesslike for years, snapped like a fault line shifting beneath the earth.
He lifted Annie into his arms and marched toward the main ballroom entrance, his face hardened into cold steel.
The room was packed with the city’s elite, men in tailored tuxedos and women covered in diamonds, all laughing and drinking in honor of Maris Williams.
Maris, wrapped in shining silk and pearls, stood beside a huge tiered cake, but her graceful smile vanished the instant she saw her son storming in with a dirty, crying child in his arms.
Shock rippled through the guests as the music stopped and the ballroom sank into a heavy, uncomfortable silence.
Victor walked straight to the center of the room, stopped in front of his mother, and fixed her with eyes as cold as frozen water.
“Mother, I need you to look at me and answer a question in front of every single person here,” he announced, his voice carrying clearly to the far end of the ballroom.
Maris turned a sick shade of gray, her hand tightening around her champagne glass until her knuckles whitened.
“Victor, darling, please do not make a scene at my birthday party, as this is completely inappropriate,” she hissed.
