Chương 3
Thomas nodded.
“I know.”
“I didn’t write this.”
“I know.”
“When did you know?”
“Not then.”
The answer landed harder than she expected.
“What did you think?”
“That your aunt had written it. That she was speaking for you.”
“At six?”
His face tightened.
“I wasn’t doing a lot of good thinking back then.”
Victor folded his arms.
“That may be the first true thing he’s said.”
Thomas ignored him.
Elena held up the copy.
“You kept this?”
“The original’s in a box.”
“Where?”
“My truck.”
Damien scoffed. “Of course it is.”
Elena turned on him. “What exactly do you know?”
He opened his mouth.
Stopped.
She saw it.
The same fractional hesitation he used when business questions became legal questions.
“What do you know, Damien?”
“My father told me this morning there was a chance a man might appear claiming to be your father.”
Elena stopped breathing for a second.
Victor said sharply, “Damien.”
“No.” Damien looked at Elena. “He said the man had a history of fraud and might try to approach you.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“It was our wedding day.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Thomas looked toward the fireplace.
Elena noticed.
The tiny turn of his mouth.
Not a smile.
Recognition.
“You knew his name?”
Damien hesitated again.
“Yes.”
“Thomas Vale.”
“Yes.”
“The name on my birth certificate.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew my father’s name.”
“I knew what you’d been told.”
“What was I told?”
Damien rubbed his lower lip.
“That he died.”
“So you knew a man named Thomas Vale might appear at my wedding claiming to be my father, and you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”
“I thought he was an extortionist.”
“Because your father said so.”
“Yes.”
Victor stepped in.
“Because I had reason to.”
Elena faced him.
“What reason?”
“History.”
“Whose?”
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Your mother trusted the wrong man.”
Thomas’s eyes lifted.
“Careful.”
Victor looked at him.
“You don’t get to warn me.”
“Maybe not.”
Thomas put his hands in his jacket pockets.
“But you might want to remember Claire isn’t here to correct you.”
For the first time, Victor looked genuinely angry.
Elena saw it and felt something shift inside her.
Not belief.
Something smaller.
A crack in certainty.
Nora’s phone vibrated.
She glanced at it.
“Hotel security is outside.”
Damien said, “Good.”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah. Good.”
Damien looked at him.
“You assaulted a guest,” Elena said.
Damien’s face tightened. “Elena.”
“He didn’t touch you.”
“He came into our reception under false pretenses.”
Thomas glanced at Nora.
She said, “Mr. Vale was on the guest list.”
Everyone looked at her.
Elena frowned.
“What?”
Nora hesitated.
“He was added three days ago.”
“By whom?”
Nora pulled up something on her tablet.
“The request came from the Cross family office.”
Damien turned toward his father.
Victor’s face did not move.
Nora continued.
“Specifically from an assistant using Mr. Victor Cross’s event authorization.”
Thomas stared at Victor.
Elena did too.
Victor said, “My office manages dozens of arrangements. That proves nothing.”
Damien stepped away from him.
“Dad?”
Victor’s gaze remained on Elena.
“I wanted to know if he would actually come.”
The gas fire clicked softly behind them.
Elena almost laughed.
She had the strange urge to laugh because the alternative was to break something.
“You invited him.”
“I allowed him to be invited.”
“So you could test him?”
“To confirm what I suspected.”
“What?”
“That he was trying to get close to you.”
Thomas said, “He knew I was trying to get close to her because I called him.”
Elena turned.
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
Damien looked at his father.
Victor said nothing.
Thomas continued.
“I asked for a meeting. He gave me one.”
Elena swallowed.
“And?”
“He offered me money.”
Victor said, “A settlement.”
“For what?”
“To go away.”
Victor’s patience finally cracked.
“To prevent exactly this.”
He pointed toward the ballroom beyond the doors.
“To prevent a convicted felon from detonating himself in the middle of my son’s wedding.”
Thomas’s eyes went cold.
“I didn’t grab anybody.”
“You came here with that locket around your neck.”
“I wear it every day.”
“You knew she would see it.”
“I hoped she would.”
“Then don’t pretend this wasn’t theater.”
Thomas looked at Elena.
“I wanted to speak to you before tonight.”
“Did you try?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He took a breath.
“Three emails. One letter to your office. One message through your foundation website. Then I called Victor.”
Elena’s face went numb.
“My office never got a letter.”
“I figured.”
“My foundation messages come to me.”
“Not that one.”
Damien looked toward the floor.
Elena saw him.
“Damien.”
He did not answer.
Her stomach tightened.
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Did you know about it?”
Another pause.
“I knew security had flagged a message from someone using your father’s name.”
She stared at him.
“And?”
“My team passed it to my father.”
“Your team.”
“For verification.”
“You had my staff give my personal messages to your father.”
“It was one message.”
“One you decided I shouldn’t see.”
“It looked like fraud.”
“Stop saying that.”
Damien’s voice rose a fraction. “What do you want me to say? That I should have let a stranger with a felony conviction walk into your life six weeks before our wedding and tell you everything you knew about your childhood was a lie?”
“Yes.”
The room went still.
Elena’s own answer surprised her.
She looked at Thomas.
“I should have been allowed to hear the lie.”
Thomas lowered his eyes.
She corrected herself.
“Or the truth.”
Victor said, “You’re upset.”
Elena turned.
“Do not do that.”
“What?”
“Do not name my emotions so you can make them smaller.”
Victor stared at her.
The security manager knocked.
Nora opened the door halfway and spoke to him quietly. A minute later she returned.
“They’ve preserved ballroom footage. They need to know whether anyone wants police called.”
Damien exhaled.
“This is ridiculous.”
May you like
Thomas said, “Call them.”
Elena looked at him.
