Chapter 2 - The Wedding Stopped Breathing
The room never recovered.
One second it had been a reception hall filled with polite laughter, clinking glasses, and the careful performance of a wealthy family wedding.
The next, it felt like a crime scene.
I didn’t care about the shattered porcelain, the collapsed floral arch, or the frosting all over Lucinda’s gown. I cared about the red mark spreading on Elisa’s cheek and the way she kept clinging to my jacket as if letting go would make everything worse.
I lifted her into my arms.
She wrapped herself tightly around my neck and cried into my shoulder.
Preston had managed to crawl out from under the arch by then. He looked dazed, humiliated, and angrier than I had ever seen him—but the moment his eyes dropped to the prenatal test in my hand, something in him faltered.
“Lucinda,” he said, his voice low and unsteady. “What is that?”
She tried to stand. Her dress was smeared with cake and cream, her hair half-fallen from its elegant pins, but she still reached for the same lie she would spend the next two days trying to polish into something believable.
“He’s setting me up,” she said, pointing at me with a shaking hand. “Sebastian planned this. He brought that envelope.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“My seven-year-old daughter knocked over a vase,” I said. “That envelope was hidden inside it.”
Preston looked at the broken pedestal.
Then at the envelope.
Then back at Lucinda.
For the first time, I saw uncertainty crack through his arrogance.
The reception guests were frozen in clusters around the room, pretending not to listen while hearing every word.
Elisa lifted her wet face from my shoulder.
“Daddy…” she whispered.
“I’ve got you,” I told her.
That was the only promise I could make for sure.
Preston took one step toward me, not aggressively this time, but with the stunned, hunted look of a man who realizes he’s standing in the ruins of something much bigger than a wedding.
“Give me the paper.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“It’s about my bride.”
“It’s about my daughter too,” I shot back. “Your bride slapped her to keep me from seeing this.”
That landed.
Hard.
Preston turned toward Lucinda again. She looked between us, her face pale beneath the frosting.
“If there’s an explanation—” he began.
“There is,” I said coldly. “And I want it too.”
But Lucinda didn’t answer.
She just stared at the photograph in my hand.
And somehow that scared me even more than the pregnancy test.
Because I already knew she had lied.
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What I didn’t know yet was how long she had been planning to.
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