“What’s in the envelope?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
Vanessa looked at me.
“This is the part where you decide whether you still want to marry him.”
Adrian moved faster than I expected.
He lunged.
Vanessa jerked backward.
Several guests screamed.
Before Adrian reached her, my cousin James stepped between them.
“Easy.”
“Stay out of this,” Adrian snapped.
James was six-foot-four and did not move.
My mother pushed through the crowd.
“This has gone far enough.”
Vanessa turned toward her.
“No, Mother. It went far enough five years ago.”
The color left my mother’s face.
Five years.
My father had died five years earlier.
The thought entered my mind so suddenly that my knees weakened.
Richard Mercer had built Mercer Hospitality from two roadside motels into fourteen luxury properties across the country.
The Grand Aurelia had been his favorite.
He used to bring Vanessa and me into this very ballroom when it was empty, spin us under the chandeliers and tell us that buildings remembered people.
He died when his Mercedes went through a guardrail outside White Ridge.
The police called it mechanical failure.
The brakes had malfunctioned.
There had been no witnesses.
I was twenty-eight.
Vanessa was twenty-five.
My mother had become a widow.
And our family had never really recovered.
“What does Dad have to do with this?” I asked.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Adrian said immediately, “Nothing.”
Too quickly.
I turned.
“Why did you answer for her?”
“Elena, she’s trying to destroy the wedding.”
“Then let her fail.”
I held out my hand.
“Give me the envelope.”
Vanessa didn’t move.
My mother grabbed my arm.
“Do not do this here.”
I looked at her.
There was sweat along her hairline.
My mother, Margaret Mercer, had hosted charity galas during hurricanes.
She had once given an interview twenty minutes after learning one of our hotels had caught fire.
I had never seen her lose composure.
Yet she was shaking.
“Why not here?”
She lowered her voice.
“Because family matters belong inside the family.”
Vanessa laughed.
“That philosophy certainly saved us.”
“Shut up.”
The words exploded from my mother with such violence that half the room fell silent again.
Vanessa flinched.
And suddenly I was twelve years old, standing between them while my mother blamed Vanessa for breaking an antique vase I had actually knocked over.
I remembered Vanessa staring at me, waiting for me to speak.
I hadn’t.
I had been the good daughter.
The easy daughter.
The strong one.
And Vanessa had learned that in our family, truth mattered less than whichever daughter our mother needed to blame.
“Give it to me,” I said.
Vanessa placed the envelope in my hand.
Adrian whispered my name.
I opened it.
Inside were six sheets of paper.
The first was a photocopy of an agreement dated six years earlier.
I recognized my mother’s signature.
I recognized Adrian’s.
At the time, Adrian had been an associate at Caldwell, Price & Cross—the firm that handled several Mercer Hospitality acquisitions.
The agreement was marked CONFIDENTIAL CONSULTING RETAINER.
I skimmed the language.
Asset protection.
Succession planning.
Shareholder consolidation.
Then I reached a paragraph underlined in red.
Upon the death or incapacitation of Richard Mercer, voting interests held by Elena Mercer would require additional proxy authorization in the event of marriage…
I stopped breathing.
“What is this?”
Adrian stepped toward me.
“It’s not what you think.”
