Before the applause could resume, the pressure inside Thomas’s fragile, narcissistic ego violently ruptured. He couldn’t process the reality. He couldn’t accept that the servant he planned to evict was the queen of the room.
He stood up, kicking his chair back so hard it slammed into the knees of the neurosurgeon behind him. He was trapped in a blind, desperate, foaming panic.
“This is a mistake!” Thomas screamed, his voice cracking, pointing a shaking finger up at the stage. “She’s a liar! She’s not a doctor! She’s just a nurse’s assistant! She stole someone’s identity! Security! Arrest her immediately!”
The reaction was instantaneous and violently decisive. The elite medical community
did not tolerate disruptions, let alone unhinged attacks on their crown jewel.
Within seconds of Thomas’s screaming outburst, three burly, heavily armed campus security guards materialized from the aisles. They didn’t ask questions. Two of them flanked Thomas, grabbing his flailing arms and pinning them forcefully behind his back, twisting just enough to make him gasp in pain.
“Sir, you are disrupting a federally funded academic ceremony. You are trespassing. Move your feet now, or you will be carried out in zip-ties,” the lead guard growled, his voice brooking no argument.
They dragged him, still shouting semi-coherent, red-faced demands, backward up the aisle. Every head in the auditorium turned to watch the spectacle. The wealthy doctors, the investors, the pharmaceutical CEOs—they all glared at him with an undisguised, aristocratic disgust.
Victoria and Haley were practically vibrating with deep, burning humiliation. Surrounded by the sneers of the high society they so desperately wanted to belong to, they had no choice. They grabbed their coats and scurried up the aisle behind the guards, heads ducked down, fleeing the auditorium like frightened, pathetic rodents fleeing a sinking ship.
