Chapter 4 - THE ENTRANCE OF THE BLACK SHEEP“Eleanor?” Beatrice gasped, clutching her pearls so tightly her knuckles turned white. “How dare you? How dare you show your face here after what you’ve put this family through?”
I slowly pulled down my sunglasses, letting my eyes sweep across the sea of gasping socialites, my trembling parents, and the man who had tried to erase my entire existence.
“You told me if I walked into this church, I could never call you my family again, Mother,” I said, my voice cutting through the cavernous space like a razor. “I came here to tell you: I accept your terms. I wouldn't want to share a last name with a nest of criminals anyway.”
Arthur stepped away from Sienna, his face contorted into a mask of pure venom. “You bitch,” he hissed, taking a step down the altar steps. “You ruined everything. You think you’re so smart with your spreadsheets and your little audits, don't you? You think you can destroy months of careful planning?”
“I didn't destroy your plan, Arthur,” I replied calmly, walking down the center aisle with the steady, measured pace of an executioner. “You destroyed it yourself the moment you forgot one fundamental rule of forensic accounting: Money always leaves a paper trail, and bigamy leaves a public one.”
I stopped five feet from the altar, looking up at Sienna, whose immaculate wedding dress now looked like a straitjacket of her own making.
“Sienna,” I said softly, my voice carrying a strange blend of pity and cold satisfaction. “Did he tell you how he met you? Did he tell you that he didn't stumble into your life by accident at that art gallery? He targeted you because my father cut me out of the voting shares, and he needed a new pipeline into Crestwell Holdings.”
“Lies!” Richard Miller roared, finally finding his voice as he slammed his cane against the marble floor. “Security! Remove this ungrateful, unhinged snake from the church immediately! She’s fabricating documents to sabotage her sister’s happiness!”
“Fabricating documents?” I raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the corporate lawyer standing beside me. “Let me introduce you to Arthur’s real wife. The one he legally married in the Cayman Islands four years ago—the one he never divorced.”
The lawyer stepped forward, holding up a certified international legal dossier.
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“Allow me to present federal and international records proving that Arthur Vance—legally Arthur Van Der Berg—married Elena Rostova in George Town on October 14th, 2022,” the lawyer announced loudly for the entire church to hear. “Because no legal dissolution of that marriage exists anywhere in the world, today's ceremony is not only legally void, it constitutes an act of intentional bigamy and corporate fraud.”
Silence descended upon the church—a silence so heavy you could hear the microscopic panic in Arthur's erratic, shallow breathing.
