She was not collapsing.
She was calculating.
“This is outrageous,” she said.
“A wedding is being destroyed over a joke.”
“A joke?” Rachel said from behind me.
My maid of honor stepped away from the bridesmaids.
Her face was wet with tears, but her voice was steady.
“You joked about taking her father’s house?”
Marlene ignored her.
Daniel reached for me again.
“Olivia, I love you.
You know I love you.”
I moved the bouquet out of his reach.
The microphone remained live.
“Then explain what we just heard.”
He looked around the ballroom, measuring the room.
His business partners were whispering.
Two trustees from my father’s estate had risen from their seats.
My uncle Thomas, chairman of the family company, stood near the third row with his jaw clenched.
Daniel’s expression changed.
The tenderness disappeared first.
Then the panic hardened into anger.
“You recorded me without my permission.”
“There it is,” Elena said quietly.
Daniel turned toward her.
“There is what?”
“The part where you stop pretending to be heartbroken and start worrying about evidence.”
A few guests gasped.
Someone near the back began to cry.
The priest closed the ceremony book.
“I believe the marriage question has been answered,” he said.
I looked at Daniel.
“No,” I said.
“I do not take this man.”
The words were simple.
I had imagined saying yes for nearly a year, yet saying no required almost no strength at all.
Daniel stared at me as if I had violated an agreement.
“You can’t do this.”
“I just did.”
Marlene stood again.
“Daniel, stop talking.”
He did not listen.
“This wedding cost a fortune,” he said.
“Our families are here.
We have contracts, reservations, plans—”
“Our families?” I asked.
He caught himself too late.
Most of the wedding had been paid for from an account established by my father for major family events.
Daniel had insisted on the Lakeside Grand, five hundred guests, imported flowers, and a reception that lasted until midnight.
He had called it a celebration of our future.
Now he sounded like a man watching an investment collapse.
Elena took the document from the priest and held it against the closed folder so no guest could read the details.
“You asked me to execute Plan B,” she said to me.
“It has been executed.”
Daniel’s eyes fixed on the folder.
“What is Plan B?”
