Chapter 4 - The Black Box in the Bridal Suite
The bridal suite dissolved into instantaneous, unadulterated bedlam.
"Call her!" Althia screamed, lunging at Stellin and digging her nails into his tuxedo lapels. "Call that treacherous little ungrateful wretch right now! Tell her we will sue her! Tell her I will disown her from this family! How dare she embarrass us in front of the resort staff!"
Stellin’s hands were shaking so violently that he dropped his phone twice onto the carpet. "It’s going straight to automated voicemail, Althia! Her whole line is routed to a corporate legal answering service!"
"Let me talk to the manager!" Sutton shrieked, storming toward Mr. Henderson with her manicured finger pointed at his nose. "Do you have any idea who my fiancé is? He is Alden Vance! The Vance Maritime Group owns half the container docks in San Diego! When his parents arrive at the bluffs and find out you’re harassing us over some administrative banking error, they will buy this entire hotel and fire every single one of you!"
Mr. Henderson did not flinch. He produced a printed document from his breast pocket. "Miss Campbell, Mr. Alden Vance senior and Mrs. Eleanor Vance were contacted by our executive office twenty minutes ago to verify if they wished to assume financial liability for this bill."
Sutton froze, a triumphant smile beginning to twitch at the corners of her mouth. "See? And what did they say?"
"They stated, through their personal legal counsel," Henderson read flatly, "that they have zero legal or financial obligation to the Campbell family, that they had already provided their personal half of the rehearsal expenses in cash yesterday, and that they will not authorize a single cent toward the remaining balance."
The room seemed to lose all oxygen. Sutton’s face went from flushed crimson to the color of wet chalk.
"No," she whispered. "No, that’s impossible. Alden loves me. Alden would never let his parents humiliate me like this."
"You have forty-eight minutes remaining, Mr. Campbell," Henderson said to Stellin, stepping backward into the hallway. "After that, security will begin the lock-out procedure on all guest wings associated with your block."
The heavy oak doors clicked shut, leaving the Campbell family standing in the silence of their own crumbling facade.
"Stellin," Althia said, her voice dropping into a raspy, terrifying register. "Your investment portfolio. Your retirement reserve. Liquidate it. Wire the funds right now."
Stellin collapsed onto the edge of the velvet ottoman, burying his head in his palms. "There is no retirement reserve, Althia."
Althia stared at him. "What did you say?"
"I liquidated the remaining forty thousand last month to pay off Sutton's defaulted luxury car lease and her past-due influencer agency bills," Stellin groaned, his voice cracking with humiliation. "We don't have fifty thousand dollars. We don't have five thousand dollars. We have seven hundred dollars in our joint checking account. If Fallon doesn't pay this... we are bankrupt. Publicly, totally bankrupt."
Sutton threw her champagne flute against the full-length mirror. The glass shattered into hundreds of sparkling diamonds, splashing golden alcohol across the hem of her hanging white lace gown.
"This is Fallon's fault!" Sutton howled, tears of raw fury stripping the mascara from her eyes. "She did this on purpose! She couldn't stand that I was getting married to a billionaire while she spends her life in overalls covered in jet fuel! She planned this! She threw herself down those stairs just to make me look bad, and now she’s stealing my wedding!"
"Sutton, shut up!" Briany suddenly cried out, standing up from her corner. Her small hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, tears streaming down her blotched cheeks.
"What did you say to me?" Sutton snapped.
"I said shut up!" Briany screamed back, her voice ringing off the vaulted ceiling. "She didn't throw herself! You pushed her! You pushed her while I was filming! You laughed while her leg bone was sticking through her skin, and you told me to keep recording so we could edit it into a blooper reel for your social media!"
Althia turned on Briany like a viper. "Briany, you insolent little brat, you hold your tongue—"
"No, Aunt Althia! I won't!" Briany pulled her secondary phone out of her pocket and held it out like a weapon. "I didn't delete it. I couldn't sleep all night. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Fallon's bone snapping like a piece of dry firewood. I sent the raw video to Fallon at midnight. I sent it to Alden at two in the morning. And I sent it to Alden's mother twenty minutes ago."
Althia stopped breathing. Stellin looked up from the floor, his jaw hanging slack.
"You... what?" Sutton whispered, the air leaving her lungs in a hollow rattle.
Before Briany could answer, the door didn't knock. It swung open smoothly, held by two hotel porters dressed in formal resort livery.
Rolling through the doorway was a high-tech, black matte motorized transport chair. Sitting in it, wearing an immaculate, tailored midnight-blue pantsuit with the right pant leg professionally split and secured with silver buttons around a massive, glittering titanium fixation halo, was me.
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My hair was swept up into a severe, elegant chignon. My face was bare of makeup except for a swipe of dark plum lipstick. Next to me walked Vesper, holding a heavy black corporate legal binder, and Marcus, whose briefcase was already open.
"Good morning, family," I said, my voice echoing off the broken glass on the floor. "I hear there’s a billing dispute."
