Chapter 7 - The Final Arrangement
Adrian spun around toward the sound of my voice. When his eyes locked onto mine, I saw something I had never seen in all the years we had lived together: raw, unadulterated, animal terror.
""Meredith,"" he choked out, taking a frantic step toward me down the aisle. ""Meredith, baby, listen to me—it’s not what you think! I can explain everything! I was forced into this!""
""Get away from her,"" Arthur Sterling’s voice did not rise in volume, but the sheer menace in it stopped Adrian dead in his tracks.
Two burly men in earpieces and dark suits—Arthur’s private security detail—materialized instantly from the wings of the gazebo. One of them placed a heavy, vice-like hand on Adrian’s shoulder, forcing him backward onto the marble platform.
Colleen rose from the third row, screeching hysterically. ""This is a setup! This girl is insane! She’s an obsessed ex-girlfriend who couldn't accept that Adrian left her! She fabricated those documents! Arthur, please, my son is a good boy!""
""Your son,"" I said into the microphone, turning my gaze to Colleen, ""let me pay twelve thousand dollars for a burial plot in Oakridge while you pocketed his sixty-thousand-dollar life insurance check. The bank transfer records are currently displayed on screen three, Colleen. Account number ending in four-eight-two-one. That's your private checking account at Eastern Bank, isn't it?""
Colleen looked up at the screen. Her bank statements, complete with her home address and signature, were glowing in ten-foot-tall black and white numbers. She clutched her chest, gasped for air, and collapsed backward into her chair, covering her face in humiliation as the socialites around her recoiled in disgust, pulling their designer skirts away from her as if she carried the plague.
Evelyn was shaking uncontrollably, her hands pressed against her lips. ""You... you were never in a fire,"" she whispered, looking at Adrian as if he were a ghost crawling out of an open sewer. ""Your parents didn't die. You used me. You were going to use my father’s company to pay off your debts.""
""Evelyn, no! I love you! Everything I felt for you was real!"" Adrian screamed, his facade completely shattering. He fell to his knees on the marble steps, reaching out toward the hem of her gown. ""I had to do it! You don't understand the people I owed money to! They were going to kill me! I did this for us!""
""Don't touch my daughter,"" Arthur Sterling growled.
He didn't yell. He didn't make a scene. He simply took his phone from his breast pocket, pressed a single speed-dial button, and brought it to his ear.
""Commissioner,"" Arthur said into the phone, his icy blue eyes fixed entirely on Adrian. ""I have a situation at the Belmont estate. We have an individual operating under a fraudulent identity attempting grand larceny and bank fraud. Furthermore, there appears to be an insurance fraud scheme involving a faked fatality in Norfolk County. Send the state police and the fraud division immediately. Yes. Every single one of them.""
Arthur lowered the phone, turned to his daughter, and gently wrapped his heavy suit jacket around her trembling, lace-covered shoulders. ""Come inside, Evelyn. The circus is over.""
""Adrian!"" a voice shouted from the hedge line.
Two estate security guards were dragging Julian back across the grass by his arms. He had lost a shoe in the mud, his tuxedo jacket was ripped, and he was sobbing openly. ""I told you, Adrian! I told you she would destroy us!""
Adrian remained on his knees, staring down at the scattered white roses on the carpet. The guests were standing up now, murmuring furiously, pulling out their phones to record the spectacle. Within minutes, the story would hit every social media platform and news outlet in New England: The Billionaire's Ghost Groom.
I walked slowly down the center aisle, the heels of my work boots clicking rhythmically against the stone pavers. I stopped two feet from where Adrian was kneeling.
He looked up at me, his eyes hollow, defeated, and filled with a desperate, pathetic confusion. ""Why, Meredith? If you had just waited... I was going to send you money. I was going to make you rich.""
I looked down at the man I had wept over for ninety days. I looked at the suit I had helped him choose. I felt no rage anymore. I felt no heartbreak. I felt only a profound, liberating lightness, as if a stone slab had been rolled off my chest.
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""I didn't want your money, Adrian,"" I said, my voice dropping low so only he could hear. ""I wanted your integrity. But you didn't have any to give.""
I unpinned the black ribbon of mourning I had worn on my apron every day since his fake funeral, dropped it onto his lap, and turned my back on him forever.
