Sophia Davis pressed her fingers to the half-open ballroom door until the cold brass handle bit into her skin. Somewhere inside, the orchestra was still killing time—Sinatra drifting over polished marble like a joke nobody wanted to laugh at. On a silver tray by the wedding planner’s station, condensation ran down a sweating glass of sweet iced tea, untouched, as if even the sugar had given up.
Two hundred guests filled the Ritz-Carlton like a tide that refused to recede, their whispers rising and falling in waves. Sophia could feel the weight of her veil, the squeeze of her corset, the way French lace turned every breath into work. And then she saw him.
A tall man in an impeccable gray suit walked down the aisle that should’ve belonged to her fiancé. The overhead chandeliers caught a small pin on his lapel—an American flag, clean lines, bright enamel—flashing once like a signal. Julian Croft didn’t hurry, didn’t glance around like he was uncertain.
He moved like the room had been designed for him. Sophia’s stomach dropped. Because in the middle of the worst day of her life… her boss had just arrived.
Uncle Frank’s gravelly voice sliced through the chatter near the bar. “She’s still hiding? Poor thing.
Two hours past start time and the groom’s gone. That’s a new record.”
A woman Sophia didn’t recognize let out a laugh that sounded like a cough. “Can you imagine?
All that money Gerard spent. Flowers, orchestra… and he didn’t even have the guts to show.”
Sophia shut her eyes for one second—one tiny, selfish second—trying to breathe past the panic. The corset wouldn’t let her.
Her throat tasted like metal. Chloe Grant, her best friend and the only person in the building who looked like she wanted to fight somebody, gripped Sophia’s elbow. “Hey.
Don’t listen to them. They’re vultures. We cancel.
We tell everyone there was an emergency.”
Sophia’s laugh cracked in the middle and turned into something uglier. “What emergency explains the groom disappearing right before a wedding, Chloe?” She swallowed hard. “They already know.
Phones are up. Screenshots are flying. By tomorrow my name will be a punchline.”
Chloe’s jaw tightened.
“Then we leave. We get you out.”
“Out to where?” Sophia whispered. Because she could hear it—her own humiliation traveling through the room like a rumor with legs.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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