Chapter 3 - The Second Conspirator
I stared at the monitor, a hollow numbness spreading through my chest. The camera angle caught the reflection in the polished brass stand of the menu board.
It wasn't just Preston.
Elena—Preston’s brand-new, porcelain-skinned bride—was standing directly behind him. As Preston raised the heavy wooden slab, Elena didn't flinch. She didn't gasp. Instead, she reached out and steadied the base of the stand to give him better leverage.
She was an accomplice to the attempted murder of my child.
"Do you know this woman?" Marcus asked, glancing sideways at me.
"My new sister-in-law," I whispered, the irony tasting like ash. "Elena Vance. Formerly Elena Sterling."
Marcus typed her name into the hotel’s internal database. Within seconds, a secondary profile popped up—not a guest profile, but an employee log.
"Hold on," Marcus muttered, furrowing his brow. "Elena Sterling isn't just a bride. She was hired as an independent corporate event coordinator by the Whitmore Hotel three months ago. And look at her financial filings linked to this corporate account..."
He clicked open a PDF document detailing the hotel’s wedding bookings. My breath hitched.
Elena hadn’t just met Preston at a charity gala like they claimed in their glossy engagement announcements. She had orchestrated the booking of this exact ballroom six months ago. Furthermore, her bank records showed three successive wire transfers originating from a Swiss account registered to a holding corporation.
The name on the holding corporation? Vance & Sterling Holdings.
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My parents hadn't just welcomed Elena into the family. They already knew her. In fact, Elena was the daughter of my father’s estranged business partner—the very man my father had ruined in a corporate hostile takeover twenty years ago.
She hadn’t married Preston out of love. She had married him out of absolute, calculated vengeance. And Preston was too arrogant, too blind, and too stupid to realize he was the primary pawn in her game.
