“Do not answer anything else.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
By midafternoon, the internal expense review had become clearer.
The Savannah estate had been booked through a vendor relationship Brooke could access because of her job.
The event description had been written to resemble legitimate client hospitality.
The same request covered transportation and several event purchases.
Nothing about the paperwork said wedding.
The photographs did that for them.
Eleanor had unknowingly provided the evidence that connected the private celebration to the corporate invoice.
The flower arch matched.
The estate matched.
The event date matched.
The champagne setup matched.
Mark’s presence matched the transportation charge.
Every smiling photograph made the explanation harder to deny.
That evening Preston returned to Atlanta.
He did not call Gregory first.
He went directly to the Buckhead house.
I was not there.
When he discovered his shared card no longer worked and that I had begun the legal process to separate my property and prepare the house for sale, the calls started again.
This time I answered with Gregory beside me.
“What the hell are you doing?” Preston demanded.
His voice had lost every trace of the man who had texted me about his imaginary Nashville meeting.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“You canceled my card.”
“Yes.”
“You’re selling our house?”
“My house is being handled by my lawyer.”
“You can’t just destroy our life because you’re angry.”
I looked at Gregory.
There it was.
Our life.
He had publicly celebrated replacing me less than twenty-four hours earlier, yet the moment money disappeared, we were suddenly a partnership again.
“I saw the wedding,” I said.
Silence.
Then, quietly, “Claire, listen.”
“No.
You’ve had months to speak.
Now you listen.”
He began rapidly.
“It wasn’t what it looked like.
Things between us have been bad for years.
Mom pushed this.
Brooke and I—”
“You told me you were in Nashville.”
“I panicked.”
“You married my employee.”
“It was a ceremony.”
That choice of words caught Gregory’s attention.
“A ceremony?” I repeated.
Preston exhaled.
“The legal details weren’t finished yet.”
So that was the defense he had found during the drive home.
If the second marriage could not legally stand while ours still existed, he wanted me to believe the betrayal somehow became smaller.
I felt no relief.
A flower arch did not become harmless because a courthouse might reject the paperwork.
