I sent a single, encrypted message to Michael Harris, the lead counsel for the Carter estate and a man who had warned me three months ago that Ethan’s background check had “unusual gaps.”
“Activate the ironclad prenup clause. The one involving moral turpitude and bad faith. Be at the altar in thirty minutes. Bring the heavy hitters.”
Michael’s reply was instantaneous: “Understood. I’m already in the lobby. Elena, are you okay?”
I stared at the screen, a solitary tear escaping and charting a path through my foundation. I wiped it away with a brutal swipe of my thumb.
“I’ve never been better, Michael. I’m finally awake.”
I walked out of that restroom and back into the bridal suite. My bridesmaids fluttered around me, oblivious to the carnage I was preparing. I smiled. I laughed. I let them touch up my lipstick. I was a master of the long game, and the Miller family was about to find out that a Carter never loses a negotiation.
The music began to swell—the opening chords of a cello concerto that I had once thought was romantic. Now, it sounded like a funeral dirge. My father, Julian Carter, appeared at the door, his eyes shimmering with a pride that nearly broke my resolve. He took my hand, his grip firm and grounding.
“You look like your mother,” he whispered. “She would be so proud of the woman you’ve become.”
“I’m doing this for her, Dad,” I said, and for the first time that day, it wasn’t a lie. I was doing this for every woman who had ever been told her value was a bargaining chip for a man’s greed.
As the double doors to the ballroom swung open, the scent of five thousand white roses hit me like a physical blow. The room was a sea of New York’s elite—investors, politicians, socialites—all gathered to witness the merger of the year. And there stood Ethan Miller at the altar, looking every bit the dashing prince in his midnight-blue tuxedo. He looked at me with a smile that was so convincing, so perfectly practiced, that I almost admired his sociopathy.
Almost.
