Chapter 1 - THE BRIDE IN THE FOYER
“DADDY, PLEASE DON’T LET HER THROW ME OUT!”
My five-year-old daughter was backing toward our front door when I saw my bride grab for her purse.
Victoria wore white satin.
Lily wore the little blue dress we had picked out together.
One of them was ready for a wedding.
The other was terrified.
“Step away from my daughter.”
Victoria turned toward the staircase.
“Daniel. Thank God. She’s having a tantrum.”
Lily shook her head so hard her curls stuck to her wet cheeks.
“She said this isn’t my house anymore.”
Outside, workers were setting chairs beneath the garden tent.
In forty minutes, a hundred guests would arrive.
I came down the stairs and stood between them.
“Where were you sending her?”
“Nowhere. I told her to get some air.”
“She’s five.”
“Please don’t do this in front of her.”
“You already did.”
Lily wrapped herself around my leg.
Her tiny floral purse was pressed against her stomach.
Victoria kept staring at it.
“What’s in your bag, sweetheart?”
“Nothing,” Victoria answered.
I looked at her.
“I asked Lily.”
My daughter swallowed.
“The phone from the blue room.”
Victoria moved before I could react.
I caught her wrist inches from Lily’s shoulder.
“Don’t.”
“She took something that doesn’t belong to her.”
“Then you should have come to me.”
“I was handling it.”
I released her wrist and crouched beside my daughter.
“Can Daddy see?”
Lily opened the purse.
Inside were a purple crayon, two crackers wrapped in a napkin, and a small black phone.
Victoria’s face changed.
Not anger.
Fear.
“The pictures are bad,” Lily whispered.
“What pictures?”
“The ones of Mommy.”
My wife, Caroline, had been dead for eleven months.
I lifted the phone.
A message lit the screen.
MASON: Once he signs after the ceremony, get the kid out. She saw enough.
I read it twice.
Then a second message arrived.
MASON: And tell me you deleted the footage from the night Caroline died.
Behind me, Victoria whispered my name.
I stood with the phone in my hand.
“What footage?”
She looked toward the open front door.
May you like
For the first time that morning, I understood she wasn’t trying to protect a wedding.
She was trying to escape.
