Celeste’s eyes sharpened. “For what?”
“For saying it now,” I answered. “Before you made me walk in front of everyone and pretend this family knew what love looked like.”
I turned before they could see the crack running straight through my chest.
I heard the whispers almost immediately. They spread behind me through the conservatory like steam under a door. A gasp. A hissed question. Somebody laughed softly and got shushed. My veil brushed the tile as I crossed the foyer and pushed through the side entrance into cold air.
Maya was already hurrying toward me, her bridesmaid dress gathered in one fist. She took one look at my face and didn’t ask the wrong question.
“Car?” she said.
“Now.”
As we moved down the front steps, Celeste’s voice floated after me, light and poisonous.
“At least she knows where she belongs.”
I stopped for a heartbeat.
The old version of me would have turned around. The girl who spent half her life swallowing insults from landlords, teachers, donors, men in suits. The girl who learned early that money made people bolder about what they thought poor women were worth.
But the old version of me had not spent the last eight months inside Blackwell Capital tracking money through shell nonprofits and dummy vendors. The old version of me had not opened ledgers that refused to balance and kept going anyway. The old version of me had not fallen in love with the son of the family she was starting to fear.
So I kept walking.
The wind lifted the edge of my veil as Maya pulled the sedan to the curb. I slid inside. Only when the doors closed did I let myself shake.
Maya locked the car and turned toward me. “Tell me whose house I need to burn down.”
That almost made me laugh.
Instead I looked back through the rain-streaked window at the conservatory, shining warm and false against the dark lawn. People still moved inside, blurred by water and distance. From far away it looked like a perfect wedding.
My future had just broken in front of half the city.
And yet all I could think was that Conrad Blackwell had made a catastrophic error.
I reached down to the satin bag looped around my wrist and opened the clasp. Under my lipstick, my folded vows, and Maya’s embroidered handkerchief sat a sealed notice from the Federal Market Crimes Division. Beneath it rested an encrypted thumb drive marked in black ink:
Legacy Accounts — Copy B.
Maya’s expression changed. She knew about the audit. She did not know how bad it had become.
“Iris,” she said slowly, “what am I looking at?”
“The reason,” I said, watching the estate gates swing open, “the Blackwells should have been kinder to me today.”
Before she could answer, my phone lit up with Julian’s name.
Maya shook her head immediately. “Don’t.”
I answered anyway.
For a moment there was only breathing on the line and what sounded like a car door slamming. Then Julian said, very quietly, “Don’t go home.”
I felt something vicious curl under my ribs. “You lose the right to give instructions when you leave me standing in a wedding dress.”
“My father sent men to your apartment twenty minutes ago.”
Maya heard that and
