My Groom Tried to Steal My Family Empire Through Marriage novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Everyone Heard

The recording plays to five hundred guests and Brynn drops her ring in a champagne glass, until Preston produces a proxy she signed on Thursday.

The recording played through, and nobody on the terrace moved.

Marissa's laugh went out over the rooftop. "Eleven months of holding her hand."

A woman in the fourth row put her hand over her mouth.

Preston lunged for the nearest screen, but two men in black stepped in front of it.

Brice's crew had been standing at those screens all morning.

Now they simply stood there with their arms folded.

"Turn it off," Preston said. He had stopped smiling. "Turn it off right now."

Nobody did.

The voice on the speakers said, "The wedding is the part that makes it legal. After that she can cry all she likes."

Every phone in the audience was in the air.

I took the microphone from the officiant's stand. My hand was steady, and that surprised me.

"I'm sorry to do this in front of all of you," I said. "I wanted you to hear it from him and not from me."

Preston took one step toward me. "Brynn, that is not what it sounds like."

"It sounds like you in a supply room, Preston."

I slid the ring off my finger.

There was a tray of champagne beside the arch, and I dropped the ring into the nearest glass.

It made a very small sound.

"Congratulations on the engagement," I said. "I hear the maid of honor is free."

Marissa made a noise and looked at the guests, hoping for sympathy.

Nobody gave her any.

The seven board members in the second row had put their phones away at the start.

Now every one of them was looking at me, and not at the man at the altar.

That was what I had walked out there to do.

"Brynn." Preston lowered his voice and put his hands up, the way a man calms a horse. "Everyone, please. That was a private conversation. It was recorded illegally, and I think we'd all agree the context has been cut."

"The context is your own mouth," I said.

"The context is that my bride is not well."

A murmur ran across the terrace.

I felt it land on me.

I had known he would try it, but I hadn't known how fast.

"She hasn't slept since her father died," he said, sad and gentle. "Her mother and I have been worried for weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so sorry you had to see this."

Somebody in the back said, "Oh, honey."

Somebody else said, "That poor girl."

I looked for Brice.

He was standing by the doors with his hands loose at his sides.

He was watching Preston's hands, just as he had promised.

"Let's talk about Monday," I said.

Preston's eyes flickered.

"You told Marissa the board sees both our signatures on the proxy. I haven't signed a proxy. Not for you, not for anybody."

"Brynn," he said, almost kindly. "You did."

The terrace went quiet again.

He drew a folded paper from inside his tuxedo jacket, and I understood he had carried it there all day.

"Thursday afternoon. In your mother's office." He held it up so the front rows could see it. "A spousal voting proxy, effective on the date of the ceremony. It's notarized, and it's in your handwriting."

"The date of the ceremony," I said slowly.

"Today."

"I'm not marrying you."

"It doesn't say marrying," he said. "It says the date."

I heard a chair scrape in the second row.

The lead director of our board, a gray-haired man who had known my father for thirty years, had stood up.

"Brynn," he said. "Is that your signature?"

I opened my mouth.

I saw the stack of venue forms on my mother's desk, and the yellow flags. I saw myself bent over it with her pen, signing and initialing, signing and initialing, while she poured me tea.

I had not read a single page.

"I don't know," I said.

It was the truth, and it was the worst thing I could have said.

Then my mother was there.

Diane Wentworth came up the white carpet in her silver dress with her arms already open, and she wrapped me up against her pearls.

"Baby," she whispered. "Baby, I've got you. I'm going to fix this, I swear to God."

She smelled like she always did, like lily of the valley and warm hair.

I leaned into her for one second. I couldn't help it.

Over her shoulder, Preston smiled for the first time since the screens had lit.

He held the folded paper out toward the lead director.

"Ask Brynn," he said, "whose name is on file."

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