*SMASH.*
The heavy crystal shattered into fifty jagged shards, splashing wine across the white satin aisle runner. She spun toward the front pews, her eyes wild, her chest heaving as four hundred guests stared at her in utter, disgusted revulsion:
“Turn it off! That’s an illegal recording! That’s a deepfake! Ethan, you know me! We were joking! We had too much champagne in the room!”
Ethan Cole stepped down from the dais.
His hand-welted leather dress shoes struck the stone steps with that unhurried, rhythmic, concussive *TACK*:
*TACK.*
*TACK.*
*TACK.*
He stopped precisely three feet from where Vanessa stood shivering in her stained blue gown.
“You weren’t joking, Vanessa,” Ethan said.
His voice had no trembling groom’s hesitation left in it. It carried the lethal, absolute calm of an officer reading an execution warrant:
“You spent eight months attempting to seduce me at charity galas. You spent eight months planting seeds of doubt about Olivia’s strength, her background, and her family.”
