Wedding Day: My Fiancé Put Another Woman in My Wedding Car novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Toast

The Aldridge Foundation gala was held, as it was every year, in the ballroom of Margaret's house on Bellevue Avenue.

I had stood in that house a week earlier in a sweater, with a bag, looking for a bed.

Tonight I wore a green dress and my mother's small gold earrings, and Nathaniel's hand was at the small of my back.

Two hundred guests turned to look at us as we came through the doors.

Some of them looked away.

Most of them did not.

"They've all seen the video," Jo said at my elbow, in a borrowed black jumpsuit. "Four million views. I got a verified checkmark."

"You didn't."

"I'm hoping."

Margaret stood at the far end beneath the chandelier, in pearls and a dove-gray gown, receiving the line.

She had put the smile back on, but it sat a little too high.

Preston stood beside her with a champagne flute and a bruise-colored shadow along his jaw.

Tiffany had stayed home.

She had said she would not set one foot in that house again, and no one had asked her to.

At nine o'clock a trustee tapped a glass.

"Our host's son has asked to give a toast," he said.

Preston stepped onto the little dais.

He took the microphone from its stand with an easy hand.

"I'd like to talk about honesty," he said.

A few people laughed, uncertainly.

"A week ago my family was made a spectacle of. I was accused of things. My mother was recorded without her knowledge in a private conversation." He let that sit. "I want to tell you who recorded it, and who profits."

He pulled a folded paper from his breast pocket.

My stomach turned over.

I knew what the paper would be before he opened it.

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