She looks like a hacker going to war.
She is wearing a black hoodie and carrying a heavy‑duty tactical backpack. She locks the door behind her, throws the bag on the bed, and pulls out a laptop that looks like it could launch a missile strike.
“Show me,” she says.
I forward the email to her secure server.
She cracks her knuckles and starts typing. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, the screen reflecting in her glasses.
“Okay,” she mutters, her eyes scanning lines of code. “First things first: who is Sparrow? I’m tracing the header information.”
She pauses, hitting the enter key with force.
“Well, this is interesting.”
“What?” I ask, sitting on the edge of the bed, hugging my knees.
“The email didn’t come from a hacker in Russia,” Naomi says. “It came from a static IP address, specifically a secure node…”
She turns the laptop toward me.
“It originated from the internal network of Arcadia Freight Systems. Someone inside the building sent this. Someone with high‑level clearance. A whistleblower. Or a conscience.”
Naomi clicks on a folder I hadn’t noticed before.
It’s labeled IPO_Roadshow_Internal.
“Look at this spreadsheet,” Naomi says. “You analyze risk for a living. Tell me what you see.”
I lean in, my eyes adjusting to the glare.
It’s a revenue report for Arcadia’s logistics division.
I scan the rows—cargo shipments, fuel costs, vendor payouts.
“Wait,” I say, frowning. “This doesn’t make sense…”
And that is the moment I realize this isn’t just about a bad marriage.
It’s about a crime.
It’s about a trap.
And it’s about to be about my revenge.
We relocated to Naomi’s loft in Wicker Park.
The hotel Wi‑Fi was an open door, and Naomi insisted that if we were going to declare war on a tech conglomerate, we needed a fortress.
By three in the morning, her living room floor looked less like a home and more like the inside of a chaotic mind. It was a sea of paper—printed emails, screenshots, ledgers, and contracts. My entire relationship with Colin Ashford was spread out on hardwood, dissected and pinned down under the harsh glare of track lighting.
I moved through the mess with a highlighter in my hand and a cold mechanical precision in my chest. The crying was done.
The risk analyst was clocked in.
“This is not a wedding,” I said, my voice flat as I stepped over a stack of vendor contracts. “This is a money‑laundering operation wearing a white dress.”
Naomi was sitting cross‑legged by the server rack she kept in the corner, her fingers flying across two keyboards.
“It’s worse than that,” she said. “Look at the background check on Elaine.”
I knelt beside her.
On the screen were a series of civil court dockets dating back fifteen years. Most of them were sealed, redacted into useless black bars, but Naomi had managed to scrape the metadata from the clerk’s archived index.
“Case number 402,” Naomi read. “Plaintiff: Vanessa Thorne. Defendant: Elaine Ashford. Cause of action: breach of promise and defamation.”
“Vanessa Thorne,” I repeated, the name triggering a vague memory. “She was the daughter of that steel magnate. Didn’t she date Colin in college?”
“They were engaged,” Naomi corrected. “For six months. Then there was a leak to the press about her father’s gambling debts. The wedding was called off. The engagement ring was kept by the Ashfords as compensation for ‘emotional distress,’ and Vanessa signed a settlement that included a non‑disparagement agreement so tight she probably can’t even whisper Colin’s name in her sleep.”
We scrolled down.
There were three other cases.
Different women. Different years.
Same pattern.
An engagement.
A sudden scandalous revelation about the bride or her family.
A breakup where Colin played the victim.
A financial settlement that magically left the Ashford estate better off.
“She doesn’t have bad luck,” I murmured, understanding finally clicking into place. “She has a business model.”
Naomi’s eyes narrowed.
“She finds women with assets or social cachet, extracts value, and then hits the eject button before the ink dries on the marriage license,” she said. “But you’re different. You don’t have a trust fund to steal. So why you?”
“Because I have a story,” I said, picking up a printed brand deck Sparrow had sent. “And in this market, a story is worth more than cash.”
“Speaking of Sparrow,” Naomi said, pulling up a spectral analysis of the audio file. “I traced the device signature. The recording wasn’t made on a phone. It was made on a dictaphone—the kind used for official meeting minutes. The serial number matches an inventory log from the Arcadia finance department.”
She hit a few keys, cross‑referencing the checkout log.
“Assigned to… Mason Reed. Junior accountant.”
My stomach turned.
Mason.
I pictured him instantly—twenty‑four years old, fresh out of Wharton, nervous eyes, a habit of chewing his cuticles. He was always the one who brought me water when I visited Colin’s office. The one who looked at his shoes whenever Elaine walked into the room.
A memory flashed back, sharp and sudden.
Two weeks ago, I had run into Mason in the lobby of Arcadia.
He looked pale.
He’d started to say something, his hand gripping my arm a little too tight.
“Ms. Reyes,” he’d stammered. “If I were you, I’d read the appendices. I’d read everything. Twice.”
At the time, I thought he was just being an awkward, diligent accountant making small talk about diligence. I laughed and told him I read contracts in my sleep.
“He tried to tell me,” I whispered. “He was warning me. He’s the whistleblower.”
“Yeah,” Naomi said. “He’s scared, Quinn. He knows they’re cooking the books, and he knows if he goes down, they’ll crush him. So he sent this to you. He’s hoping you’ll blow the whistle so he doesn’t have to.”
“Let’s look at the venue,” I said, standing and pacing. “Why Ravenwood? Why today?”
Naomi projected a calendar onto the wall.
“This is the official booking log for Ravenwood Estate,” she said. “You’ve got the great lawn reserved for the ceremony at four in the afternoon. But look at Ballroom B. And the library.”
I squinted.
There was a separate booking running parallel to our reception.
Event: Arcadia Freight Systems Private Investor Summit. Host: Colin Ashford.
“They’re holding a board meeting at my wedding,” I said.
Naomi snorted.
“It’s not just a meeting. It’s an investor roadshow. Think about it. The venue is packed with the wealthiest people in the Midwest. The press is there. The champagne is flowing. Colin gets to stand up, give a speech about family values and transformation, point to his ‘adoring’ grateful wife, and then walk into the library and sign term sheets for millions of dollars while the iron is hot.”
“It’s a theatrical performance,” I said. “I’m not the bride. I’m the opening act.”
But there was more.
Naomi opened a file titled Plan_B_Crisis_Mode.
It was a timeline.
A literal schedule of events for a worst‑case scenario.
“Here,” she said, pointing.
I read:
1:30 p.m. – Arrival of Reyes family. Security to segregate to Zone C.
2:00 p.m. – Provocation protocols active. Open‑bar access denied to Reyes party.
4:15 p.m. – If an incident occurs: PR team to deploy ‘sympathy package’ to press contacts.
4:30 p.m. – Crisis PR meeting in the library.
My eyes locked on the last line.
“Crisis PR meeting,” I repeated. “That’s not a contingency. That’s scheduled.”
They weren’t just worried my family might embarrass them.
They were banking on it.
They were actively engineering a situation where my father would get angry or my mother would cry—just so they could capture it on camera and use it to activate the morality clause.
“They want the scandal,” I realized, my voice cold. “If the IPO goes well, they keep me as a prop. If the numbers tank or if they get caught for fraud, they trigger the scandal. They blame the instability of my family for ‘distracting the CEO.’ They dump me, keep the assets, and play the victim to stabilize the stock price.”
“It’s evil,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “It’s actually evil.”
“It’s efficient,” I corrected. “And it’s sloppy.”
I walked over to my own laptop and logged into the Bayshore Meridian Capital secure portal.
My hands were steady now.
I wasn’t Quinn the fiancée anymore.
I was Quinn the auditor.
“I have access to the databases they use to file their quarterly reports,” I said, typing in my two‑factor authentication code. “And now, thanks to Mason, I have their real internal numbers.”
I pulled up the official S‑1 filing Arcadia had submitted to the SEC—the document that claimed they were a solvent, rapidly growing unicorn.
Then I pulled up Mason’s spreadsheet on the other half of the screen.
I started connecting the dots.
“Here,” I said, pointing. “Look at this revenue stream from a company called Apex Logistics. Three million in Q1. Three million in Q2. It accounts for twenty percent of their growth. Who owns Apex?”
Naomi was already typing.
“Nobody,” I said slowly as the public records came into focus. “I’m checking the incorporation records. It’s a shell. No employees. No trucks. The address is a P.O. box in Delaware.”
I traced the wire transfers using the internal ledger Mason had sent.
“Arcadia sends five million to a ‘consulting firm’ in Panama for ‘market research,’” I narrated, following the money trail. “That firm sends four million to a holding company in Ireland. That holding company pays Apex Logistics, and Apex pays Arcadia back for ‘shipping services.’”
“Round‑tripping,” Naomi breathed.
“They’re sending their own money around the world and bringing it back as revenue to make the company look busy,” I said. “It’s a Ponzi scheme with trucks.”
Then the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
And the blood drained from my face.
I opened my email “Sent” folder—my work email.
I searched for “Arcadia.”
There it was: a due‑diligence email I had filed six months ago.
At the time, Colin had asked me to “take a quick look” at their preliminary numbers.
“Just as a favor,” he’d said.
“Just to give me confidence.”
I had written a glowing email to his board, praising their efficiency.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“What?” Naomi asked, looking up from her screen.
“I endorsed it,” I said, pointing at the email. “I used my professional credentials to vouch for their financial health. I didn’t do a deep dive because I trusted him. I just looked at the summary he gave me.”
I turned to Naomi, my eyes wide.
“That’s why he needed to marry a risk analyst,” I said. “If this fraud is discovered, they won’t just blame the CFO. They’ll blame me. They’ll say, ‘Look, even his wife, the senior analyst from Bayshore, signed off on it.’”
“I’m not just the prop,” I said bitterly. “I’m the fall guy.”
“If the SEC investigates, you’re the one who looks like an accomplice,” Naomi said quietly.
The morality clause wasn’t just about taking his money back.
It was about discrediting me.
If I tried to testify against him, they would use the “crazy, trashy family” narrative to paint me as an unreliable witness—a gold digger who was bitter about the prenup.
They had thought of everything.
They had designed a machine to chew me up and spit me out.
And they had disguised it as a fairy‑tale wedding.
I walked to the large industrial window of Naomi’s loft.
The sky over Chicago was turning a bruised purple. The sun was about to rise on my wedding day.
I held a mug of coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
I looked out at the skyline, at the glittering towers of glass and steel where men like Colin and women like Elaine moved pieces on a board, destroying lives without ever spilling a drop of their vintage wine.
I accepted it then.
The Colin I loved was dead.
In fact, he had never existed.
He was a character played by a con artist who needed a human shield.
And Elaine…
Elaine wasn’t just a mother protecting her son.
She was the architect.
She drew the blueprints for the cage.
I took a sip of the bitter coffee.
“Naomi,” I said, not turning around.
“Yeah?”
“Print it all. Make three copies. One for us, one for a lawyer, and one for a special agent you know at the SEC.”
I watched the first ray of sunlight hit a skyscraper in the distance.
“I’m going to get dressed,” I said. “It’s time to go to work.”
At seven in the morning, the doorbell to Naomi’s loft buzzed.
“That’s the cavalry,” Naomi said, not looking up from her monitors.
Jordan Ellis walked in carrying two large coffees and looking like he had slept in his suit—which, knowing his reputation and the cut of his jacket, probably cost more than my car.
Jordan was the kind of lawyer you hired when you wanted to burn a village down but make it look like an electrical accident.
He specialized in high‑conflict divorces and white‑collar financial crime—a Venn diagram that overlapped more often than people liked to admit.
“I read the file you sent over,” Jordan said, skipping pleasantries.
He tossed the prenup onto the coffee table.
“It’s vicious. It’s nasty. If I had written it, I’d be proud. But as a human being, it makes me want to vomit.”
“Can we beat it?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa, hands wrapped around a mug of black tea.
Jordan took a sip of coffee and looked at me.
“The law is a double‑edged sword, Quinn,” he said. “This morality clause? It’s technically legal. They can define ‘reputational harm’ however they want. But here’s the thing about contracts—they require good faith. If we can prove that they entered into this agreement with the specific intent to trigger the clause—that they’re engineering the scandal—then it’s not a contract. It’s a conspiracy to defraud.”
“They have a schedule,” I said, pointing to the timeline pinned to the wall. “They literally blocked out time for a ‘crisis PR meeting.’”
“Exactly.” Jordan nodded. “That’s entrapment. It turns the prenup from a shield into a weapon, and judges hate it when people weaponize their courtrooms.”
I looked at the scattered papers.
“So what do I do?” I asked. “Just not show up? Grab my parents and drive back to Indiana right now?”
Jordan shook his head slowly.
“No,” he said. “That’s exactly what they want. Think about the narrative they’ve built: you’re the poor girl, the charity case. If you run, their PR machine spins into motion. They’ll say you got cold feet when the background checks got too deep. They’ll say you were after the money and panicked when the new prenup appeared. You’ll look guilty. Colin will look like the heartbroken saint. The stock will probably go up out of sympathy.”
He leaned forward, eyes sharp.
“You can’t run, Quinn. You have to walk into the trap. And then you have to spring it on them.”
“How?”
“With a digital tripwire,” Naomi said, spinning her chair back toward us.
She pulled up a window on her main screen. It looked like a standard PowerPoint file.
“This,” Naomi said, “is the pitch deck for the Arcadia investor summit. I managed to acquire a copy from the server access Sparrow gave us. I’ve made a few modifications.”
“What kind of modifications?” I asked.
“I embedded a passive tracking script in the metadata of the file,” Naomi explained, her voice humming with the excitement of a hunter setting a snare. “It’s invisible. It doesn’t change the slides. But the second anyone opens this file, it pings back to my server with the IP address, the geolocation, and the user credentials of the device opening it.”
“And here’s the kicker,” Jordan added, a dark grin spreading across his face. “We know they’re planning to pitch investors at the wedding. That’s illegal. You can’t conduct unregistered securities solicitation, especially not when you’re cooking the books. If the CFO opens this file on the Ravenwood Wi‑Fi network during the reception, we have proof they’re conducting fraudulent business in real time. And that proof…”
“Gets automatically forwarded to a secure Dropbox I set up for the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Naomi finished.
Jordan pulled out his phone.
“I know an agent at the SEC,” he said. “Monica Hale. She’s been trying to nail a tech IPO for fraud for two years but hasn’t had a smoking gun. I’m going to call her. I’ll tell her we have a tip about an unregistered investor summit happening at Ravenwood. I won’t give her your name. I’ll just tell her, ‘If you get a ping from inside the house, you have probable cause to raid the party.’”
A shiver ran down my spine.
It wasn’t fear.
It was the cold, calculating thrill of the counterattack.
“So I have to go through with it,” I said quietly. “I have to put on the dress. I have to say the vows.”
“You have to be the perfect bride,” Jordan said. “You have to smile. You have to let them think they are in total control. You have to let them think they’ve won… right up until the moment the feds knock on the door.”
I stood.
“I can do that,” I said. “I’ve been pretending to be okay in their world for three years. I can do it for six more hours.”
But there was one loose end—a legal one.
“I need to go to the county clerk,” I said.
Jordan raised an eyebrow.
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, grabbing my purse, “I might be walking down the aisle, but I’m not getting married today.”
The office of the county clerk opened at 8:30 a.m.
I was the first person in line.
The woman behind the glass partition looked tired. She held lukewarm coffee and blinked at me. I must have looked unhinged—jeans, sweatshirt, no makeup—but with the frantic energy of a woman who had seen the future and decided to rewrite it.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I need to withdraw a marriage license application,” I said. “Name is Quinn Reyes. The other party is Colin Ashford.”
She typed slowly.
“Date of ceremony?”
“Today,” I said.
She paused and looked up at me.
“Today, honey? Usually people just don’t turn in the signed license if they change their minds. You don’t have to come down here.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I want it canceled. I want it voided in the system. I want to make sure that even if a piece of paper with signatures on it shows up on your desk next week, it’s legally worthless.”
She shrugged.
“All right. It’s your right. Do you want me to notify the other party?”
“Is that required by law?” I asked, holding my breath.
“Nope,” she said, popping her gum. “Privacy laws. You’re the applicant. You can pull it.”
“Then no,” I said. “Don’t tell him. Let it be a surprise.”
She stamped a form, the heavy thud echoing in the empty room like a gunshot.
“Done,” she said. “You’re single, Ms. Reyes. Have a nice day.”
I walked out into the morning sunlight.
I took a deep breath.
For the first time in a week, the air didn’t feel like it was being rationed.
I had just cut the legal cord.
I was free.
Now everything that happened at the altar would just be theater.
My next stop was Ravenwood Estate.
It was nine in the morning. Florists were already setting up the arches. The catering trucks were unloading. It looked like a dream.
All I could see were crime‑scene markers.
I found Walter Whit, the owner of the estate, in his office. Silver‑haired, meticulous, and obsessed with the reputation of his venue, he looked up, surprised to see the bride in sneakers three hours before hair and makeup.
“Ms. Reyes,” he smiled. “Everything is on schedule. The weather is holding up beautifully.”
“Mr. Whitlow,” I said, closing the door behind me. “We need to talk about your liability insurance.”
His smile faltered.
“Excuse me?”
“I have reason to believe my fiancé intends to use your venue to conduct unregistered financial business during the reception,” I said calmly. “I’m concerned that if this activity attracts regulatory attention, it could reflect poorly on Ravenwood. I don’t want your estate to be liable for his business dealings.”
Walter went pale.
In the world of high‑end events, “regulatory attention” was code for “police raid.”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked stiffly.
“I want to sign an addendum to our venue contract,” I said, pulling a document Jordan had drafted in the car. “It states that all vendor payments for the event—the catering, the music, the security—are guaranteed by me personally from an escrow account I’ve set up. Not by Arcadia. Not by Colin.”
“Why?” he asked, suspicion creeping in.
“Because if his assets get frozen today,” I said, looking him dead in the eye, “I want to make sure your staff still gets paid. And in exchange, I want you to instruct your security team that they answer to me today. Not to Elaine. Not to Colin. If I ask them to remove a guest, they remove the guest, regardless of who it is.”
Walter looked at the contract.
Then at me.
He was a businessman.
He understood risk.
He saw a bride offering him a guaranteed paycheck in the middle of a potential disaster.
He picked up his pen.
“I’ll inform the head of security immediately,” he said. “The staff takes orders from the bride.”
“Thank you, Walter,” I said. “You just saved your reputation.”
I drove back to the hotel to meet the hair and makeup team.
My phone buzzed.
It was my mother.
“Quinn?” Her voice was small, worried. “Dad is pacing around the room. He’s worried about his suit. He says it looks too shiny. And I brought that blue silk dress, but I saw the pictures of the venue online, and I don’t know… maybe I should just wear the gray one. It fades in better.”
I closed my eyes.
I could picture her standing in a motel room, holding two dresses, terrified of embarrassing her daughter because some rich woman had made her feel small.
“Mom,” I said.
“Yes, mija?”
“Wear the floral one,” I said. “The one with the big red hibiscus flowers. The one you wore to Tía Sofía’s party.”
“But, Quinn…” she hesitated. “It’s so bright. Elaine said—”
“I don’t care what Elaine said,” I cut in gently. “Elaine is boring. I want you to look like you. I want you to be colorful. I want you to be loud.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Mom, listen to me. Today is going to be… interesting. People might be rude. They might try to make you feel out of place. But I need you to promise me something: do not shrink. Do not apologize. If they stare, let them stare. You are the mother of the bride. You earned your seat at that table.”
“Okay, mija,” she said, sounding stronger. “Okay. For you, I’ll wear the flowers.”
I hung up.
I didn’t tell her the truth yet.
I didn’t tell her that her bright, “tacky” dress was going to be the visual hook that made the Ashfords look like elitist monsters on camera. I didn’t tell her that her presence was the bait for their morality clause.
I’d explain later.
For now, I just needed her to be herself.
Back in the bridal suite, the chaos had begun.
The makeup artists were unpacking their kits. The dress was hanging in the window, a ghostly silhouette of white lace.
Naomi was there, pretending to steam the veil, but I saw the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear. She gave me a subtle nod.
The trap was set.
The script was live.
Agent Monica Hale at the SEC was on standby.
I walked into the bathroom and locked the door.
I leaned over the sink and looked at myself in the mirror.
My face was pale, but my eyes were clear.
The fear was gone.
The sadness was gone.
All that was left was the cold, hard resolve of a woman who had realized she was the only person coming to save her.
I practiced the words in the mirror. I watched my lips move.
“I’m not letting your poor family humiliate my son at his own wedding,” I mimicked softly, hearing Elaine’s voice.
I smiled.
It wasn’t a nice smile.
“I’m not kicking my family out,” I whispered to my reflection. “I’m kicking the groom out.”
I straightened.
I unlocked the door.
It was showtime.
From the outside, the rehearsal dinner had been a masterclass in polished deception.
For the first time in my life, I was the best actor on the stage.
I moved through the crowd in a cocktail dress that cost two thousand dollars, a glass of sparkling water in my hand that I pretended was champagne. My face was a mask of bridal radiance. I hugged cousins I’d never met. I accepted compliments from women who looked at my engagement ring with calculating eyes, assessing its carat weight before they even made eye contact with me.
I leaned into Colin’s touch, letting him kiss my temple for the photographer while my mind ran a constant cold surveillance log:
Subject: Colin Ashford.
Pulse: steady.
Behavior: performative.
Threat level: critical.
To the untrained eye, this was a celebration.
To me, it was an evidence‑gathering expedition.
I had a high‑fidelity recording app running on my phone, the device clutched in my left hand. Naomi had rigged it to upload to her cloud server in real time, just in case someone decided to confiscate my phone.
I saw Elaine signal the maître d’.
She did it with a subtle flick of her wrist, the kind of gesture that implied absolute authority.
She led him toward a quiet alcove near the service entrance.
I excused myself from a conversation with a venture capitalist and drifted toward a large floral arrangement of white hydrangeas between me and Elaine.
I turned my back to them, pretending to check my makeup in a compact mirror, but angled my phone’s microphone toward the gap in the foliage.
“The seating chart for the reception needs a final adjustment,” Elaine was saying. Her voice was low, smooth, and venomous.
“Of course, Mrs. Ashford,” the maître d’ replied. “What changes do you require?”
“The Reyes family,” she said, using my last name like it was a medical condition. “Currently, they are at tables four and five. That is too central. I want them moved to tables nineteen and twenty.”
“Nineteen and twenty, ma’am? Those are behind the structural pillars. Next to the kitchen swing doors. They won’t be able to see the head table.”
“Exactly,” Elaine purred. “We have a videography team coming in to film the toasts for the investor reel. I do not want them in the shot. They are visual clutter. Just make sure they are fed and kept out of the frame. If they complain, tell them it’s for acoustic reasons.”
“Understood.”
I felt a flash of heat rise up my neck but forced it down.
I didn’t storm over there.
I didn’t throw my drink.
Instead, I tapped my phone’s screen.
Timestamp marked.
7:14 p.m.
I walked away.
Visual clutter.
That’s what she called my father.
That’s what she called my mother.
The people who had paid for my textbooks with overtime shifts and tip jars.
I made my way toward the bar.
The room was thick with Colin’s inner circle—the frat‑boys‑turned‑finance‑bros, guys who wore loafers without socks and talked about the market like it was a fantasy football league.
Trevor Lang, Arcadia’s CFO and Colin’s best man, was holding court near the ice sculpture. He was three scotches deep, tie loosened, face flushed with the arrogance of a man who believed he owned the room.
Naomi was hovering nearby, dressed in all black, holding a DSLR camera with a massive lens. She had convinced the photographer she was a second shooter hired by the bride for “candid” shots.
In reality, she was filming everything in 4K with a directional mic.
I caught her eye.
She tilted her head toward Trevor.
I moved closer, still smiling.
“It’s a lock, boys,” Trevor was saying, sloshing his drink. “The S‑1 is filed. The roadshow starts tomorrow, right here in the library. By Monday morning, the bell rings and we’re all retiring to St. Barts.”
“What about the audit?” one of the groomsmen asked nervously. “I heard the SEC is sniffing around the logistics numbers.”
Trevor laughed—a loud, barking sound.
“The SEC is asleep at the wheel. They’re understaffed and overworked. By the time they figure out how we structured the round‑trip revenue, we’ll have already cashed out the initial offering. If everything blows up six months from now, who cares? We’ll be on the boat. The company can burn, but our personal accounts will be offshore.”
Naomi’s shutter clicked rapidly, capturing his smug expression.
We had the CFO on tape admitting to premeditated securities fraud and intent to dump stock.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned.
It was Mason.
He looked like he was going to be sick.
He was clutching a glass of soda water so hard his knuckles were white.
“Quinn,” he whispered, eyes darting around. “Can we talk?”
“Of course,” I said brightly, playing the part. “So glad you could make it. Are you having a good time?”
He leaned in, bypassing the script.
“Did you get the email?”
I dropped the smile.
“I got it,” I said quietly. “I sent everything I could find,” he murmured. “The dual ledgers, the chat logs, the shell company registrations. I can’t do anything else. If they find out it was me, they’ll ruin my career. They’ll sue me into oblivion.”
“They won’t,” I said. “Because where they’re going, they won’t have access to their lawyers.”
He blinked, confused.
Then he saw the coldness in my eyes.
“Don’t sign anything else,” he warned. “No matter what they put in front of you.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “Thank you, Sparrow.”
He flinched at the codename, then nodded once and disappeared back into the crowd.
I needed a moment.
The air in the ballroom was thick with perfume and moral rot.
I excused myself and headed for the restroom.
As I reached for a stall door, the main door swung open and two voices drifted in.
I froze.
It was Sarah and Jessica—two of the bridesmaids Elaine had insisted I include. Colin’s cousins. The boarding‑school type who probably didn’t know how to pump their own gas.
I stepped quietly into a stall, locked it, and lifted my feet so my shoes wouldn’t show.