Chapter 21: You Wanted a Scene

Emme's POV

The video ran on a screen ten feet tall.

Nobody in the ballroom moved.

On the big screen, my husband whispered *I miss you* to my sister under a hotel lamp, and four hundred people watched him kiss her.

Someone gasped.

A woman at table six put her hand over her mouth.

Dalton stood beside me and did not breathe.

When the clip ended, I turned to the back of the room and lifted one finger.

Ansel ran it again, slower.

This time it stopped at second nineteen.

Dalton's face filled the screen, with his eyes lifted and fixed.

"Look where he's looking," I said into the silence.

The camera zoomed, and the frame sharpened.

He was not looking at Camille.

He was looking straight into the lens.

"He saw me," I said. "He knew exactly where I was standing, and he kissed her anyway."

Someone near the front whispered, "He did it for the camera."

Dalton's lawyer was already moving toward the exit with his briefcase held to his chest.

Dalton found his voice.

"This is edited," he said, hoarse. "This is a deepfake. My wife is a very sick woman."

"Then explain the van," I said.

Ansel dragged the corner of the frame wider.

A gray van sat across the loading dock with its dome light on.

Stuck to the window was a small round clinic sticker.

"That van is the court's doctor," I said. "Ask him what he wrote down that night."

I waited.

"Nothing. Because I didn't scream."

The board chair, in the second row, took out her phone and began to dial.

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