Chapter 11: The Approach
The heavy oak doors of the ballroom muffled the applause as I stepped across the threshold, the rich scent of expensive perfume and roasted prime rib washing over me. Conversations hummed at the surrounding tables, but all eyes were turned toward the stage where Martha stood beneath the towering banners of the charity foundation. I slipped quietly along the perimeter, keeping my head down, moving past servers carrying silver trays of champagne flutes. Every step felt like walking across thin ice; I could feel the invisible weight of judgment from people who didn't know me, people who had only heard Martha’s whispered version of the desperate, unhinged daughter-in-law who couldn't be trusted with her own child.
Ahead of me, near the rear service entrance, stood the technical booth for the venue's audiovisual system—a cluttered enclosure of mixing boards, monitors, and cabling guarded by a young technician in a black polo shirt who was staring intently at a laptop screen. This was the chokepoint. If I wanted to stop Martha from delivering her final, triumphant closing remarks—where I knew she planned to announce a new family trust that systematically stripped David and me of our guardianship rights—I had to bypass the stage entirely and hijack the main projection screens.
"Miss, you can't be back here," the young technician said, stepping out from the booth as I approached, holding up a hand to block my path. "Authorized personnel only for the AV control."
May you like
I didn't flinch. I stopped two feet away from him, pulled the manila folder from under my arm, and slid Arthur Vance’s certified digital forensics report across the metal counter. "My name is Claire Vance," I said, my voice steady, carrying a quiet authority that caught him off guard. "That woman on stage is my mother-in-law. She is currently projecting a fraudulent narrative about my family on your primary display feeds. If you don't want your venue's network implicated in a criminal cyber-tampering case, you are going to let me plug this flash drive into your master switcher right now."
The technician blinked, looking from my face down to the official seal of the county investigator printed on the top sheet of the report. He swallowed hard, his youthful arrogance evaporating in seconds. He looked out toward the crowded ballroom, then back at me, the conflict warring in his eyes. Slowly, without a word, he stepped aside and gestured toward the master USB port on the front of the switcher console.
