Once we’re married, it won’t matter anymore.
Dad watched that section again.
Then again.
Finally he asked,
“Do you still want the wedding to happen?”
I stared at him.
“You think I should marry him?”
“No.”
“Then why would you ask that?”
“Because there’s a difference between a marriage and a wedding.”
I didn’t understand.
Dad closed my laptop.
“If you cancel tomorrow, what happens?”
“I tell everyone he cheated.”
“With Claire.”
I flinched.
“Yes.”
“And what does Ethan say?”
“I don’t care.”
“You will when lawyers get involved.
Or reporters.
Or his investors.
Ethan is very good at controlling a story.”
I looked at him.
My father had disliked Ethan’s business partner, Miles Rennick, but he had never spoken badly about Ethan.
Until then.
“How long have you not trusted him?”
Dad didn’t answer immediately.
“Three months.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
He stood.
“Because three months ago Ethan asked me something no future son-in-law should ever need to ask.”
“What?”
Dad looked toward the hallway to make sure my mother wasn’t listening.
Then he said,
“He wanted to know exactly what happens to your grandmother’s trust after you marry.”
I stared at him.
My grandmother had died when I was twenty-four.
She left Claire and me shares in Whitmore Holdings, the family company she had built with my grandfather decades earlier.
The trust was substantial.
But Ethan and I rarely discussed it.
“He said it was estate planning,” Dad continued.
“I believed him at first.”
“And then?”
“He asked whether a husband could exercise voting authority if his wife became incapacitated.”
Something inside me turned to ice.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because asking an ugly question isn’t proof of ugly intentions.”
He pointed toward my laptop.
“This may be.”
I hugged myself.
“So what do we do?”
Dad was quiet for several seconds.
Then he smiled.
It wasn’t a warm smile.
It was the expression of a man who had just realized his opponent had walked voluntarily into a locked room.
“We let him have his wedding.”
The following forty-eight hours were the strangest of my life.
I smiled through the rehearsal dinner.
I kissed Ethan goodnight.
I listened while Claire gave a toast about sisterhood and nearly crushed the champagne flute in my hand.
Meanwhile, Dad hired a private investigator.
His name was Robert Keene.
By noon the day before the wedding, Keene had discovered something strange.
Ethan had rented a private storage box at an old financial services company in downtown Boston.
Not a bank.
A discreet firm specializing in physical document storage.
The account had been opened under the name
E.
Calloway
.
Calloway was Ethan’s mother’s maiden name.
Then Keene found something else.
A woman named Rebecca Sloan had made monthly payments on the same account for nearly seven years.
I had never heard her name.
That evening, another envelope arrived at my parents’ house.
No return address.
Inside was a single object.
A small silver key.
