`ETHAN: See you at the altar tomorrow, beautiful. Rest tonight. The future belongs to us.`
Then, through the recessed connecting door between Room 414 and Room 416, the laughter started.
It was sharp, glass-brittle, and drenched in high-society malice.
“Pour wine on her dress, lose the rings, whatever we have to do,” Vanessa Reed’s voice cut through the tongue-and-groove lath and plaster with crystalline clarity:
“She doesn’t deserve him.”
My hands, resting flat on the Egyptian cotton duvet, turned to ice.
Vanessa was my maid of honor. We had shared dorm rooms at Georgetown. I had held her hair when she cried over failed relationships; I had introduced her to our circle; I had listened to her flatter my father’s family for seven years.
Beside her, Kendra Vance—my college roommate, whose trust-fund allowance was funded by commercial factoring lines in Chicago—let out an appreciative, cynical snort:
“You’re terrible, Vanessa.”
