Chương 2
Margaret seemed to recover enough to reclaim her anger. “This was staged.”
Richard’s gaze moved to her at last.
“You threw the wine.”
“You brought attorneys to my son’s wedding.”
“My daughter asked me to remain in the hotel.”
That was true, though not in the way the guests would understand.
Sophia had asked him to wait in a private conference room two floors below with outside counsel and the signed termination notice. She had planned to speak to Daniel after the first dance, away from Margaret and the guests. If Daniel could explain the financial records she had found, Richard would leave through the service entrance, the folder unopened.
If Daniel could not explain them, Sophia would tell him the funding agreement was over.
She had not planned to become a red stain in three hundred videos.
Margaret pointed at the folder. “The Whitmore agreement is binding.”
One of Richard’s attorneys stepped forward, but Richard raised two fingers without looking back. The man stopped.
Richard said, “Not after material misrepresentation.”
Daniel flinched.
Sophia saw it.
Margaret did too.
Her head turned slowly toward her son. “What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
The speed of his answer made it sound rehearsed.
Sophia removed Naomi’s napkin from her sleeve. The linen had turned pink, and the wine continued spreading beneath it.
She looked at Daniel. “Did you know?”
He glanced toward the phones.
“That is not an answer,” she said.
“Sophia, not here.”
“Did you know?”
His jaw tightened. “Not all of it.”
The room seemed to contract around her.
Not all of it.
He had chosen the phrase with care. It admitted enough to avoid a lie and concealed enough to delay the truth.
Sophia nodded once.
Naomi touched her back.
Daniel moved forward. “Let’s go upstairs. We can talk privately.”
“You had privacy for eleven months.”
“I didn’t understand what my mother was doing.”
Margaret’s voice sharpened. “Daniel.”
He looked at her automatically.
That look decided what the wine had not.
Sophia reached down and gathered the front of her stained gown. “Naomi, please get my bag.”
“It’s already upstairs.”
“Then get me out of here.”
Daniel stepped into her path. His face was no longer pale. It had become blotched around the neck, the way it did when he was embarrassed.
“We are married.”
The statement was not romantic. It was an argument about jurisdiction.
Sophia looked at him for several seconds.
“Yes,” she said. “That is one of the problems.”
She walked around him.
Guests moved back. Gold chairs scraped against marble. Several women Sophia had known since college avoided her eyes while continuing to record. An elderly man near the aisle lowered his phone and looked ashamed when she passed.
The double doors remained open. Beyond them, the hotel corridor glowed beneath brass sconces. Two banquet employees stood near a service station pretending to study a stack of folded napkins.
Sophia crossed the threshold without looking behind her.
The cold wine reached her stomach.
Naomi caught up while Richard and the attorneys followed at a distance. Sophia could hear Margaret speaking rapidly in the ballroom, telling someone to stop the recordings, telling someone else to call the family lawyer, telling Daniel not to sign anything.
The elevator arrived with a cheerful electronic chime.
A couple inside had come down from the hotel’s rooftop bar. The woman held a gift-shop bag. The man wore sneakers and a baseball cap. They stared at Sophia’s gown, then at Richard, then at the two lawyers.
“We’ll take the next one,” the woman said.
Sophia stepped inside. “There’s room.”
The couple remained where they were.
The doors closed.
For several floors, no one spoke.
Naomi watched the numbers light above the door. Richard studied the black folder’s absence in his hand as though he had only just realized he had given it away.
Sophia leaned against the mirrored wall.
The bride reflected there looked composed from the neck up. Her hazel eyes were dry. Her chestnut hair remained pinned in its low bridal bun. The makeup artist’s work had survived the ceremony, the reception, and the moment her mother-in-law used a two-hundred-dollar cabernet as a weapon.
Below the necklace, the dress looked like evidence.
“Did you know Daniel knew?” Sophia asked.
Richard’s eyes met hers in the mirror.
“I suspected.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
The elevator kept rising.
Naomi glanced between them. “We are going to need a room with fewer men.”
One of the attorneys lowered his eyes.
Richard said, “Naomi.”
“She has been publicly assaulted at her own wedding, her husband just admitted he concealed something involving roughly a hundred million dollars, and you’re standing behind her like this is a quarterly review.”
“It was one hundred and twenty-eight million.”
Naomi stared at him.
Richard rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That was not helpful.”
“No,” she said. “It was extremely you.”
The elevator opened onto the bridal floor.
Sophia walked toward the suite while Naomi searched through the small satin bag she had retrieved earlier. The hotel corridor smelled faintly of lilies and industrial carpet cleaner. A housekeeping cart stood near the ice machine. Someone had left a room-service tray outside a door with two unfinished cheeseburgers and a silver bowl of fries gone limp.
The ordinary sight made Sophia’s knees weaken.
She had not eaten since nine that morning.
Naomi unlocked the bridal suite. Inside, half-empty champagne glasses stood among cosmetics, curling irons, garment bags, tissue paper, and flowers. The room still belonged to the hours before the wedding, when six women had laughed about false eyelashes and tried to decide whether the florist’s white roses looked ivory under the lamps.
Sophia walked into the bathroom.
She gripped the marble counter with both hands.
The wine had seeped through the lace and lining. Red streaks marked her skin. The stain looked larger in the bright bathroom light, almost black near the center.
May you like
Naomi came in and closed the door behind them.
Richard remained in the suite.
