The children– and most of the adults– in the room all gasped. Lumi put her palms up and tried to appeal for calm while Viktor looked at his friends in disbelief. Vivian saw red and raged.
‘That was YOU scuttling off the balcony like a cockroach!’ she shouted, launching herself into the middle of the room. Walter held her back by one arm, while her other pointed fiercely.
‘How DARE you!’ she looked between Anastasia and Tristan, whose hands were still in his pockets. Face sombre.
Tristan looked back at Vivian and made a silent plea of an apology, but she ran, tears filling her eyes as she charged out.
Emme headed efficiently towards the kitchen. Vivian’s harrowed and hurt face had made Emme feel even more wretched for her strange part in it, and she wanted to get to Cat. She had to walk past Tristan first. He looked at her, pleading with her now. She shook her head.
‘Not now,’ she said under her breath, stopping for a second. There was so much she wanted to say to him.
‘Not so fucking smug now!’ Anastasia shouted from her spot, taunting her sister’s trail.
‘Fucking bitch,’ Cat whispered to herself, shaking her head at the kitchen door.
‘Mummy, what’s going on?’ Olympia demanded, looking up in shock.
‘Bill, I think we should go,’ Lexy said, her face contorting at the language her children were hearing.
‘Carols anyone?’ chuckled Viktor, quite amused that the Steinherr family fallout had been so beautifully delivered to him on a plate, while also hoping it wouldn’t affect Walter’s offer.
‘Youuuuu BASTARD!’ Dimitri Diamandis yelled, lunging across the room at Tristan Du Kok and landing one surprisingly well-placed blow to the right side of his eye. Tristan fell sideways, into Emme, in a smash and a clatter of chocolate mousse and glass.
‘No!’ Cat hollered.
‘Stop that!’ cried Viktor’s assistant Benjamin.
Frida Alm screamed the loudest, but all the guests around Tristan were covered in glass and chocolate mousse.
Emme and Tristan had both fallen to the floor in a heap.
‘ENOUGH!’ bellowed Walter Steinherr, as Lysander, helped by Karius Sommar, pulled his brother-in-law and held him back.
‘Go home, Dimi! Take the kids!’ Lysander ordered.
‘Calm please everyone!’ begged Lumi.
And with that, the annual Kivvi Christingle was over.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Emme stood in oversized men’s jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt, her feet bare on the cold tiled floor.
‘Thank you, Tiago, I appreciate all of this.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he smiled.
‘No, really, I’m a mess.’
‘Here, take my boots, they’re big but they’ll get you home. Wear thick socks.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Don’t be weird about it,’ Tiago said with a shrug and a joke.
The heel of Cassie’s borrowed stilettos had broken when Emme went flying.
Tristan had looked desperately at her, in their messy clinch.
