“So you damaged protected buildings?”
“I approved emergency site work.”
“Don’t lie to me now.”
His jaw tightened.
“The board wanted them condemned.”
“And you helped.”
“I was trying to save eighteen thousand jobs.”
Victoria interrupted.
“Adrian, stop.”
He ignored her.
“If Harrington International defaulted, pension funds, employees, subcontractors—thousands of people would have been hit.”
“So you committed fraud.”
“I made a decision.”
“You paid someone to damage buildings and falsify evidence.”
“I thought no one would get hurt.”
I stared at him.
The sentence was so familiar.
The excuse behind almost every betrayal humanity had ever invented.
I thought no one would get hurt.
“What did your mother know?”
Adrian looked at Victoria.
And suddenly I understood.
Victoria hadn’t sabotaged my wedding because I was poor.
Not truly.
Not because of my accent.
Not because I didn’t belong.
Those cruelties were real, but they weren’t the reason she’d become desperate.
She wanted me gone because my investigation could send her son to prison.
Victoria lifted her chin.
“I was protecting him.”
Adrian stared.
“Mother.”
“I told you I would handle it.”
My stomach turned.
The office break-in.
“Was that you?”
Victoria said nothing.
“Did you send someone into my office?”
Margaret answered.
“Yes.”
A cry went through the guests.
Victoria rounded on her.
“You ungrateful—”
“Enough!”
The voice belonged to Adrian’s father.
Charles Harrington had barely spoken all evening.
Now he rose from the front row.
He looked twenty years older than he had that morning.
“Enough, Victoria.”
She stared at her husband.
“You knew nothing about this.”
“No.”
He looked at Adrian.
“But I do now.”
Adrian’s shoulders collapsed.
“Dad—”
Charles shook his head.
“Don’t.”
The word contained more grief than anger.
Then he turned toward me.
“Emma, I am sorry.”
I couldn’t answer.
The officiant stood frozen behind us.
The orchids seemed absurd now.
The music.
The flowers.
The champagne.
Five hundred beautifully dressed people sitting inside the wreckage of a family.
Adrian approached me.
“Emma.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t.”
“Please let me explain somewhere private.”
“No.”
“This isn’t the place.”
A laugh escaped me.
I almost didn’t recognize my own voice.
“You let your mother into my locked bridal floor three minutes before our wedding, and now you’re concerned about privacy?”
He flinched.
“I love you.”
That hurt more than anything else.
Because I believed him.
I genuinely believed Adrian loved me.
And that was the terrible lesson.
Love did not automatically make someone honest.
Sometimes dishonest people loved deeply.
Sometimes cowards loved sincerely.
Sometimes the person who would hold you while you cried was the same person quietly creating the reason for your tears.
“I love you too,” I said.
His eyes filled with hope.
I hated what came next.
“But I don’t trust you.”
Hope vanished.
“Emma—”
“And I’m not marrying a man I don’t trust.”
Victoria inhaled sharply.
Somewhere behind us, someone began crying.
Adrian stared at me.
“You’re ending this?”
