Chapter 8 - The Backup Venue
Owen drove over with a navy binder under his arm.
He set it on my kitchen table and opened it.
Inside were contracts, invoices, seating charts, menu tastings, and handwritten notes in Brielle’s looping script.
He pulled out a ballroom contract from a hotel downtown.
“She had a backup venue,” he said.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“She booked it ten months ago.”
The hotel ballroom had been reserved for the same date.
Deposit paid.
Twenty thousand dollars.
Cancelled six weeks earlier.
I looked at the cancellation form.
“Why would she cancel a paid venue?”
Owen gave a short, bitter laugh. “Because she wanted your house more.”
A note was clipped to the back.
Garden photographs better. Free venue = upgrade flowers + dress. Delaney will fold if Mom pushes.
I read that last line twice.
Delaney will fold if Mom pushes.
For the first time, the whole thing stopped looking like chaos.
It had been a plan.
Owen paced beside the table.
“She told me the hotel cancelled us after a plumbing problem. Said she was saving the wedding by moving it to your house.”
“And you believed her.”
“I keep saying that sentence, don’t I?”
He sounded disgusted with himself.
I closed the binder.
“This is not your fault.”
He looked at me.
“I asked her twice whether you had agreed.”
“She lied twice.”
“I stopped asking.”
That, at least, he owned.
He pulled out another sheet.
“This is worse.”
It was a spreadsheet of payments.
His parents’ ninety thousand dollars.
My twenty-five-thousand-dollar wedding gift.
Money from my parents.
Credit card charges.
Cash advances.
The total was far beyond what anyone had told me.
Nearly three hundred and forty thousand dollars.
I whistled softly.
“Owen.”
“I know.”
“Can you afford this?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
He sat down.
“She told me most of it was covered by family gifts and sponsor discounts.”
“Wedding sponsors?”
“She was trying to build an online lifestyle brand.”
Of course she was.
Brielle had always believed that if something looked successful long enough, reality would eventually cooperate.
Owen stared at the binder.
“I don’t know who I’m marrying.”
Before I could answer, his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
Brielle.
He declined it.
A message arrived instantly.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Another followed.
If you’re with Delaney, don’t come home.
Owen read it, face flat.
Then my security app chimed.
Movement at the west gate.
I opened the camera.
May you like
Brielle was standing outside alone.
She was holding a set of bolt cutters.
