The White House kitchen was chaos. It always was, but tonight - tonight was different. A state dinner meant precision, elegance, and not a single misplaced garnish. You had been tasked with something simple: retrieve a last-minute request for a very specific, very expensive bottle of wine from storage. Easy.

Until you turned the corner too fast.

You didn’t even see him before it happened; just felt your foot catch on the edge of the mat and the tray slip from your hands. A blur of deep red followed, a bottle spinning mid-air like it had second thoughts about its fate before—

Shatter.

Silence followed. The kitchen staff froze. And standing just feet away, barely out of the splash zone, was none other than A.B. Wynter, the White House Chief Usher himself. His impeccably tailored suit remained untouched, but his shoes - well, that was another story.

He sighed, slow and measured, and then looked at you. The weight of his gaze felt heavier than the state dinner itself.

“I assume,” he said, voice as smooth as the wine now soaking into the expensive tile, “that was not an intentional act of sabotage.”