It hit Catherine in the chest.
Water exploded across her already soaked clothes, splashed onto Christine, and sprayed over the piano keys.
The audience erupted in the loudest laughter yet.
“Bullseye!” someone shouted.
Jackson threw his head back laughing. “Oh, this is better than I expected. The street children are getting a bath.”
Madame Esther cackled. “They look like drowned rats.”
Catherine froze, water dripping from her hair, her face, her chin. The impact had hurt. The humiliation hurt more.
She looked down at the wet keys, at the water pooling on the perfect white surface, and something deep inside her snapped, not loudly, but cleanly, like a string breaking.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered, so quiet no one heard. “I tried.”
Then a voice cut through the theater like lightning.
“What is going on here?”
Silence slammed into the room.
Heads turned.
A man strode down the center aisle, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a gray suit tailored into authority. His hair was dark, silver at the temples, his face carved with power and fury.
Whispers spread like wildfire.
“Lucas Williams…”
“The owner…”
Catherine didn’t know him, but she could feel the entire room’s fear shifting toward respect.
Lucas Williams climbed the steps onto the stage with three decisive strides. The workers backed away. Jackson’s smugness evaporated into a polite mask.
“Mr. Williams,” Jackson began smoothly. “I can explain. These children—”
“Be quiet,” Lucas said, voice low and dangerous.
Jackson shut his mouth as if the words had been physically pushed back inside.
Lucas’s eyes swept across the stage. Across the bottle. Across the wet piano keys. Across Catherine and Christine, shaking in soaked clothes.
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