Chapter 8 - The Projection of Truth
The cathedral erupted into a chaotic storm of shocked murmurs, rustling programs, and clicking camera shutters.
Tristan’s face went rigid, his charismatic smile freezing into a grotesque grimace. "Zoe? What the hell are you doing? Stop joking around. People are filming this."
"I am not joking, Tristan," I said, turning to face the four hundred stunned guests, including the senior board members of Apex Biotech.
Adrian stood up from the front pew, walked over to the sound engineer's console in the south transept, and inserted a flash drive into the cathedral's master multimedia console—which had been wired to display live video of the vows on two sixty-foot high-definition screens mounted beside the altar.
The screens flickered twice and burst to life.
Instead of the livestream of the altar, the massive monitors displayed the high-resolution screenshot from Tristan's secret social media account.
There, twenty feet wide for every investor, journalist, and colleague to see, was the photograph of Tessa Jenkins asleep in Tristan's Range Rover, beneath the caption: I can't marry her. But as compensation, I'll give you all my devotion.
A collective shriek of horror echoed from the front pews.
Tessa Jenkins jumped up from her seat, her face turning the color of curdled milk as she tried to cover her face with her program.
Tristan spun around, staring at the screen in utter, paralyzed disbelief. "Where... where did you get that?"
"And that was just the appetizer, Tristan," I announced, my voice slicing through the cathedral like a scalpel.
The screen transitioned to the second photograph—the navy velvet box containing my engagement ring, taken six months ago, with Tristan’s own words displayed in bold white lettering: She still thinks the wedding is about love. After the wedding, she'll finally stop acting like every decision needs her signature.
The board members in the third row—including our lead venture capitalist, David Sterling—rose to their feet in pure, unadulterated fury.
"You didn't propose to me because you loved me, Tristan," I said, looking at the sweating, cornered man before me. "You proposed to me to trigger the marital proxy clause in section fourteen of our corporate charter. You wanted to steal my voting shares so you could execute an illegal transfer of Apex’s clinical technology to Chiron Therapeutics."
"That’s a lie!" Tristan roared, stepping toward me with clenched fists, his suave facade completely shattering. "She's delusional! She’s having a nervous breakdown!"
May you like
"Is it a lie, Tristan?"
The screen shifted again, displaying the digital tracking logs from the 'Project Lazarus' synthetic watermark, showing the exact IP address of Chiron Therapeutics downloading the stolen sequences from Tessa Jenkins's personal laptop at 2:14 AM yesterday.
