PART ONE
Two days after my son’s wedding, the restaurant manager called and said, “We reviewed the security camera footage. You need to see this for yourself. Please come alone, and don’t tell your wife.”
That’s how I discovered the truth—something I never could’ve imagined.
I made a plan for revenge, and they were going to pay for what they’d done. Three weeks after I wrote a check for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to cover my son’s wedding at the Cathedral of Hope in Nashville, Tennessee, the restaurant manager called me with a voice that trembled like he was confessing to murder. I was sitting in the sunroom of our Belle Meade estate, nursing a cup of black coffee that tasted like copper.
Morning light streamed through the floor‑to‑ceiling windows, glinting off the Italian marble floors my wife, Claudette, had insisted we install two years earlier. She said it would “elevate the space.”
Now I wondered what else she’d been elevating while I wasn’t paying attention. My wife of eighteen years stood by the antique credenza arranging white magnolias in a crystal vase.
She hummed something soft and gospel‑like, the kind of tune that used to make me feel like home. Now it just sounded hollow. Claudette looked every inch the devoted Southern wife—pearls at her throat, cream silk blouse, perfectly coiffed silver‑streaked hair.
She was fifty years old and still stunning in that Grace Kelly way that made men twice her age turn their heads at the country club. But something about her had changed lately. Or maybe something about me had changed.
I’d been feeling off for weeks. Dizzy spells. Heart palpitations.
A persistent metallic taste in my mouth that no amount of mouthwash could wash away. Dr. Leal said it was stress, said a man my age who had built a forty‑eight‑million‑dollar real‑estate empire from nothing had earned the right to feel tired.
I’d believed him. That was my first mistake. My phone buzzed against the glass‑top table.
I glanced at the screen. RAPHAEL MENDOZA. The manager of the Hermitage Grand Ballroom—the five‑star venue where we’d held Donovan and Savannah’s wedding reception three weeks earlier.
I’d paid him in full, cash on the barrel, the way I always did business. There was no reason for him to be calling me now. I picked up.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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