“I am the groom.”
“Not anymore,” the manager replied.
The guests fell silent again.
Daniel’s humiliation was now visible in every direction.
His college friends stood beside men he hoped would invest in his next project.
His employer’s regional director was seated near the back.
Members of my father’s board had heard him describe my inheritance as something he intended to acquire.
He looked for sympathy and found only faces turned away.
Marlene tried a different strategy.
She approached me slowly, lowering her voice as though we were the only two women in the room.
“Olivia, you are in shock.
You have always been sensitive, especially since losing your father.
Let us take you upstairs, get you calm, and discuss this without strangers interfering.”
There it was—the method she had described in the hallway.
Make her emotional.
Make her doubt herself.
Move her away from witnesses.
I held her gaze.
“I am calm.”
Her lips tightened.
“You are humiliating yourself.”
“No,” I said.
“I am letting everyone see you clearly.”
The words struck harder than shouting would have.
Marlene’s hand flew to her chest again.
This time she staggered backward into the front-row chair.
Several guests moved instinctively, but she waved them away.
“I cannot breathe,” she said.
A physician who was attending the wedding came forward.
He checked her pulse and asked whether she had pain, dizziness, or a history of heart problems.
Marlene glared at him.
“I do not need a doctor.”
The physician stepped back.
Her crisis vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Daniel saw the reaction in the room and became desperate.
He pointed at me.
“She planned this.
She brought a microphone to her own wedding.
What kind of person does that?”
“The kind who heard you plotting against her,” Uncle Thomas said.
Daniel turned toward him.
“You never liked me.”
Thomas walked into the aisle.
He had known me since birth and had carried my father’s casket beside me.
“I gave you every chance,” he said.
“Samuel’s last concern was that Olivia would be loved for herself.
You looked me in the eye and promised she would be.”
“I do love her.”
The speakers were still connected.
Daniel’s earlier words seemed to remain in the air between us.
I don’t love her.
I just want the money.
One of his business partners left his table and walked toward the exit.
Another followed.
Daniel noticed.
“Where are you going?” he called.
