She looked like a magazine cover. Her gown was custom Vera Wang, dripping in pearls, and a diamond necklace sparkled at her throat. She was the daughter of a prominent real estate mogul, a girl Evelyn had been trying to set Marcus up with for years. Chloe walked down the aisle with a smug, knowing smile on her face. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t even acknowledge my presence on the altar. She just locked eyes with Marcus, walking toward him to take the place that, thirty seconds ago, was supposed to be mine.
“Security,” Evelyn snapped, waving a manicured hand toward a pair of suited men near the side exit. “Remove this woman from the altar. She’s ruining the aesthetic.”
The two men started walking toward me.
I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch. I just waited.
Because I knew something none of them did. I knew that Arthur’s text message had a direct line to the Vanguard Holdings executive suite. I knew that the billion-dollar merger the Sinclairs had been desperately banking on—the merger that was the only reason Chloe’s father had agreed to this sham wedding in the first place—was currently tethered to a digital kill switch.
And Arthur had just flipped it.
As Chloe reached the halfway point of the aisle, smiling brightly at the flashes of cell phone cameras, a strange, discordant sound broke through the music.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
It was a sharp, aggressive vibration. Someone’s phone going off.
Evelyn turned her head, scowling at the interruption. “Turn those off!” she hissed at the crowd.
But it wasn’t just one.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
Ring.
Bzzzz.
All at once, across the first three rows—the rows reserved for the Sinclair corporate board, the bank representatives, and the executive partners—phones began erupting. Ringing, buzzing, vibrating against the wooden pews.
The CFO of Sinclair Logistics, a balding man named Richard, pulled his phone from his pocket, his face annoyed. But the moment he looked at the screen, the color entirely drained from his face. He stared at it, his jaw dropping open.
Next to him, a representative from Chase Bank let out a loud, strangled curse, completely ignoring the solemnity of the church.
Marcus looked away from Chloe, his brow furrowing. “Richard? What’s going on? Put the phone away.”
Richard stood up slowly. His hands were shaking so violently he almost dropped the device. He looked from his phone up to Marcus, and then, slowly, his eyes shifted to me.
“Marcus,” Richard croaked, his voice cracking. “Vanguard… Vanguard just pulled out.”