Inside the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, the air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume and old money.

Crystal chandeliers cast a blinding, brilliant light over the crowd. A string quartet played a soft classical piece, perfectly masking the vicious undercurrents of the vanity fair.

Kendal stood in the center of the room, wearing a custom-made, starry-night gown. She was surrounded by a circle of Wall Street socialites, her smile flawless and practiced.

"To Kendal," an investment banker's wife said, raising her champagne flute with an overly sweet smile. "And to her upcoming marriage to the head of the Hammond family."

Kendal lowered her head, feigning shyness. She lifted her left hand just enough to let the light catch the massive pink diamond engagement ring on her ring finger.

Gasps of admiration rippled through the group.

Standing nearby, her mother Marlene lifted her chin. She soaked in the envy of the room, thrilled by the absolute power her daughter was about to secure.

Near the side entrance of the ballroom, Zane slipped through the heavy doors, panting heavily. His eyes darted frantically through the crowd.

He dodged a waiter carrying a tray of drinks and ducked behind a marble pillar. He pulled out his phone and sent a voice memo to Godfrey, keeping his voice to a harsh whisper.

"Her car is in the underground garage. The bodyguards just took the little girl up to a private suite."

Godfrey had just stepped through the side entrance when the audio message played against his ear.

His footsteps stopped instantly. The leather soles of his shoes screeched against the polished marble floor.

The little girl.

Those three words wrapped around Godfrey's throat like a vine covered in thorns, choking the air out of his lungs.

He leaned his back against the freezing wall. His brain ruthlessly calculated the timeline. Five years since the divorce. The kid was four or five. It was the ultimate, undeniable proof of her betrayal.

His hands began to shake uncontrollably. He thought the pain had gone numb years ago, but the agony tearing through his chest felt brand new.

Alex noticed his boss's pale face and stepped closer, his voice trembling. "Mr. Hammond... do you need to cancel the rest of the evening?"

Godfrey took a massive breath, forcing the blood back down from his head. When he opened his eyes, they were as cold and sharp as ice picks.

"No," he said, his voice completely hollow.

He straightened his spine and pushed open the heavy double doors leading into the main ballroom.

The moment the doors opened, the loud chatter in the room died down. Every pair of eyes locked onto the true king of New York.

Kendal's eyes lit up. She lifted the hem of her gown and walked toward Godfrey with the grace of a proud peacock, ready to claim her prize in front of the entire city.

But Godfrey's eyes didn't even flick in her direction. His gaze swept the massive room like a radar, searching every corner, every shadow.

Kendal reached him. She smiled brightly and reached out to loop her arm through his.

Godfrey shifted his weight and stepped to the side, completely dodging her touch.

The socialites watching from the sidelines saw everything. The whispers started instantly, spreading through the corners of the room like a virus.

Kendal's smile froze. A flash of pure humiliation and venom crossed her eyes, but she quickly forced her social mask back into place.

Suddenly, a piercing burst of static ripped through the ballroom's top-tier sound system.

The massive screen on the main stage, which had been playing a documentary about the Lee family's charity work, went completely black.

Everyone turned toward the stage. The string quartet stopped playing in shock.

The black screen flickered, and a bright green audio waveform appeared. The entire room fell into a bizarre, suffocating silence.

Then, a voice echoed through the speakers. It was a cold, steady female voice. A voice that made Godfrey's soul violently shudder.

"So, as long as I drink this, tomorrow's headlines will have the absolute proof of my affair. Right, Kendal?"

The recorded words dropped into the crowd like a live grenade.

Every single head in the room snapped toward Kendal. Her face drained of all color, turning a sickly, ashen white.

Kendal let out a piercing scream. She abandoned her elegant posture and sprinted toward the soundboard, desperately trying to rip the power cords out of the wall.

The hotel's head of security, alarmed by the sudden hijacking of their systems and the escalating chaos, rushed forward. He and another uniformed hotel guard stepped out of the shadows and blocked her path, their faces like stone, desperate to prevent a physical altercation on the main stage.

Up on the second-floor wraparound balcony, a slender figure in a minimalist black evening gown stepped into the spotlight.

Alyse looked down at the chaos below. Her eyes tracked through the crowd and locked perfectly onto Godfrey.

A cold, vengeful smile curved her lips.

The harsh glare of the spotlight hit Alyse. Her black gown clung to her frame, radiating the absolute authority of a queen stepping out of the dark.

Gasps erupted across the ballroom floor. Several older Wall Street tycoons rubbed their eyes, refusing to believe what they were seeing.

"That's the Ellis girl," a socialite whispered, her hand covering her mouth. "The one they threw out five years ago."

The audio recording continued to play through the speakers. Kendal's sharp, malicious voice echoed off the walls.

"Cousin, who told you to get in my way?"

The sound of a glass shattering played next, followed by the heavy, sickening thud of a body hitting the floor. Every second of the audio ruthlessly shredded Kendal's perfect facade.

Preston, Kendal's father, turned purple with rage. He slammed his fist onto a cocktail table and screamed at the security guards. "Cut the main power! Now!"

The head of security ran over, sweating profusely. "Sir, we can't! The hotel's central system has been entirely locked out by an unknown hacker. We have no control!"

Hidden in the shadows of the second floor, Alyse's phone screen was rapidly scrolling with complex green code. It was the absolute, crushing power of Briar.

Godfrey stood frozen in the center of the crowd. He tilted his head back, his eyes locked onto the glowing figure on the balcony.

The words from the recording acted like a sledgehammer, smashing his entire reality to pieces.

He had spent five years believing she was a cheap cheat. He had never, not for one second, considered that the scandal was a meticulously planned trap fueled by drugs.

A violent wave of guilt, shock, and fury crashed into him. The blood vessels in his eyes burst, turning his vision red.

The reporters in the room snapped out of their shock. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, they rushed forward, cameras flashing wildly. The blinding lights illuminated Kendal's terrified, twisted face.

"It's AI!" Kendal screamed, backing away from the reporters. "It's a fake recording! She made it up!"

But the wealthy women who had just been praising her now took large steps backward, treating her like a disease.

Declan, Kendal's younger brother, pointed a shaking finger at Alyse on the balcony. He cursed violently and grabbed a heavy wooden chair, preparing to hurl it at the speakers.

Before he could lift it, two of the hotel's on-site security guards, who had been stationed by the emergency exits, rushed into the fray. They tackled Declan to the marble floor, pinning his arms behind his back to prevent him from destroying hotel property. The crowd shrieked and scattered.

Sitting in her wheelchair near the front, Beatrice, the matriarch of the Lee family, shook violently. She slammed her cane against the floor. "What is the meaning of this?!" she gasped, clutching her chest.

Alyse rested one hand casually on the white marble railing of the balcony. She ignored the screaming and the chaos below, her eyes resting coldly on Beatrice.

The audio finished playing. The green waveform vanished from the giant screen.

It was immediately replaced by a high-definition screenshot of a credit card statement from a hotel in the Hamptons, dated exactly five years ago.

The statement clearly showed Kendal's private credit card purchasing a massive quantity of date-rape drugs just one hour before the scandal broke.

The concrete proof sent the room into an absolute frenzy. The looks of shock turned into pure disgust as they stared at the pure, innocent bride-to-be.

Kendal's psychological defense shattered. She spun around and pointed directly at Godfrey, tears streaming down her face.

"I did it because I loved you!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "I did it all for you!"

The pathetic attempt to drag him down with her made Godfrey's stomach churn with physical nausea. He took a slow, deliberate step backward, severing any connection to her.

His eyes never left Alyse. He searched her cold, indifferent face, desperate to find a single trace of the warmth she used to have for him.

He found nothing but an abyss of ice.

Alyse picked up a microphone. Her crisp voice instantly cut through the screaming crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said smoothly. "That was just the appetizer."

Her words swept through the room like a blizzard. Everyone stopped moving, holding their breath, waiting for the executioner's blade to drop.

Marlene shoved her way through the crowd, pointing a shaking finger at the balcony. "You ungrateful bitch! We took you in!" she shrieked, trying to use family loyalty to silence her.

Alyse shot her aunt a look of pure contempt. Her index finger tapped the screen of her phone.

The screen behind her flickered again. It wasn't a static image this time. It was a high-resolution security video.

The timestamp in the corner was locked onto that exact night, five years ago.

The video showed Alyse, completely unconscious, being dragged down a hotel hallway by two large men. They were pulling her by her arms, treating her like a broken ragdoll, dragging her toward the infamous hotel suite.

The moment the video started playing, it felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the ballroom. A deathly silence fell over the billionaires and socialites.

On the massive screen, Kendal was walking right behind the two men. She wasn't trying to stop them. She was looking around nervously, waving her hands, directing them to move faster.

The footage then cut to a different angle. It clearly showed Kendal shoving a heavily intoxicated, unidentified man into the exact same suite. Then, she reached out and locked the door from the outside.

The three-minute silent video acted like a surgical blade, slicing the Lee family's glamorous reputation into bloody ribbons.

Beatrice gasped for air, her hands clutching her throat. Her private doctor rushed forward, shoving a nitroglycerin pill under the old woman's tongue.

Preston lost his mind. He ran toward the projector, throwing his body in front of the lens in a pathetic attempt to block the light. The video simply projected onto his expensive suit, making him look utterly ridiculous.

The reporters surged forward, shoving their microphones practically into Kendal's mouth.

"Miss Lee! Why did you lock your own cousin in that room?"

"Does this mean the Hammond cheating scandal was entirely fabricated by you?"

Kendal dropped to her knees. She pressed her hands over her ears and screamed, a raw, desperate sound. Her perfectly pinned hair unraveled, falling around her face like a madwoman's.

Up on the balcony, Alyse lowered the microphone. There was no wild joy of revenge in her eyes. There was only the extreme, hollow calmness of someone who had survived hell.

She knew this video didn't just destroy Kendal. It permanently severed the last drop of blood tying her to the Lee family.

Down below, Godfrey stared at the screen. He watched the men drag Alyse's unconscious body across the carpet.

His heart felt like it was being crushed inside a vice.

The guilt and agony hit him like a tidal wave, drowning him. He hated himself. He hated that he had been so blind, so arrogant, that he hadn't even bothered to investigate for five minutes.

Suddenly, Godfrey snapped. He violently shoved a reporter out of his way and sprinted toward the spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

A Lee family bodyguard stepped in front of him. Godfrey didn't even slow down. He threw a brutal punch, his fist connecting with the guard's jaw with a sickening crack. The man dropped to the floor.

"Get out of my way!" Godfrey roared. His voice shook the walls. He took the carpeted stairs three at a time, moving like a rabid animal.

Alyse watched him charge up the stairs. A flash of deep disgust crossed her eyes. She turned around, preparing to leave the mess behind.

Just then, the main doors of the ballroom were thrown open with a massive crash.

A squad of fully armed NYPD officers marched into the room. They had received an anonymous, heavily encrypted dossier of evidence earlier that evening, and the sudden viral explosion of the video gave them the exact probable cause they needed to intervene.

The lead detective held up his badge, his voice cutting through the panic. "Kendal Lee! We've received credible evidence regarding your involvement in unlawful imprisonment and drugging. You are being brought in for immediate questioning."

The cold, metallic click of handcuffs echoed loudly as they locked around Kendal's thin wrists. She thrashed wildly, sobbing and begging her parents for help.

Marlene threw herself at the officers, trying to pull them off her daughter. Two female cops grabbed her arms and shoved her back without hesitation. Marlene could only watch as Kendal was dragged toward the exit.

The flashing lights of the cameras turned the room into daylight.

In the corner, the Lee family's PR director was sweating through his shirt, screaming into his phone, trying to kill the story.

But it was useless. Every major media platform in the country had been hijacked. The video was force-pinned to the top of every feed.

It was Alyse's secondary strike as Briar. She was going to make sure the Lee family burned in the sunlight.

Godfrey finally reached the top of the balcony.

It was empty.

He spun around frantically. His sharp eyes caught the flutter of a black dress disappearing around the corner at the end of the long hallway.

"Alyse!" Godfrey screamed. The name tore his throat apart. He sprinted down the hall.

The corridor was empty. The only sound was his heavy breathing and the slow hiss of the heavy metal fire exit door closing shut.