champagne shattered on the marble floor before he even realized his hand had let go of it.
What Daniel did in the next 10 seconds would be talked about in that city for years to come.
Time slowed the way it only does in the worst moments of a person’s life.
Daniel didn’t remember crossing the room.
He didn’t remember pushing past his own guests, some of whom later said he moved like he wasn’t even human anymore, sprinting toward the balcony doors with a force that knocked a waiter’s tray clean out of his hands.
Maria.
Victoria turned, her face pale, her hands trembling, already searching for words that wouldn’t come.
Daniel, I it was an accident.
I didn’t mean.
He didn’t even look at her.
He reached the railing and looked down, his heart slamming so hard against his ribs it hurt to breathe.
And that’s when the
twist nobody saw coming happened happened.
Three floors below the penthouse, the building’s exterior maintenance crew had spent the entire afternoon installing a temporary safety net and scaffolding platform for a window cleaning project that had been scheduled for weeks.
A detail that had been mentioned once briefly in a maintenance memo nobody at the party had bothered to read.
It was industrial-grade netting meant to catch falling tools and debris strung tightly across two support beams that jutted out from the building’s east side.
Maria’s fall ended not with a sound everyone feared, but with a violent snapping thud as her body hit the net and bounced once, twice before finally coming to a stop, tangled and gasping.
Three stories below the party, she had just been serving drinks at an hour earlier. She was alive.
Badly hurt, a shattered wrist, cracked ribs, a concussion that would keep her
disoriented for days, but alive.
Daniel didn’t wait for security, didn’t wait for an elevator.
He took the emergency stairwell three steps at a time, tearing his tuxedo jacket at the shoulder as he forced open a maintenance door that led to the scaffolding platform.
