Chapter 22
SIENNA
“He told me he couldn’t do it,” Camille says.
For a second I don’t understand what she means. My mind is still trying to catch up to the sight of her storming across the lawn in her wedding dress, face twisted with rage, half the guests turning to stare.
Then she looks straight at me and says, “He told me he couldn’t go through with the wedding because he still loves you.”
The words hit me so hard I actually feel myself sway.
I stare at her, then at Ethan somewhere beyond her, and the whole morning seems to tilt. The flowers. The chairs. The music that had just started to settle into place. All of it suddenly feels unreal, like a set built around the wrong story.
Viktor is in front of me before I even realize he moved, his body between mine and Camille’s, but I can still see enough around his shoulder to know this is really happening.
Camille is shaking. Not crying yet. Not falling apart in that soft, helpless way people expect from brides. She looks furious, humiliated, alive with it.
And I’m standing here trying to understand how my life has once again become the thing ruining a wedding.
“Don’t even try to lie to me,” Camille goes on, her voice rising. “I’ve seen the pictures. I should have known something was between you when you showed up, and he knew you so intimately.”
“You both humiliated me in front of everyone,” I say shakily. “How can you—”
“Enough,” she says. “This was your plan, all of it. To ruin my wedding.”
My jaw falls open.
“What I don’t understand,” Camille says, her voice cutting through the silence, “is what you were doing in his father’s arms last night.”
My whole body goes cold.
She takes one step closer, eyes locked on me, and now there’s triumph mixed in with the fury, like she’s finally reached the part she came here to use. “Are you really that desperate?”
For a second I can’t speak. My face burns.
My chest feels tight. I’m suddenly aware of everything at once: the guests watching, the bridesmaids hovering just behind her, Ethan somewhere to the side in awful, drunken silence, Viktor standing between us, and me in the middle of it all with nowhere to go.
Camille keeps staring at me. “Well?” she says. “Should I say it for you? You couldn’t have Ethan, so you threw yourself at his father?”
“Camille,” Viktor says.
She ignores him.
“Honestly, Sienna, I almost admire it. It takes a certain kind of woman to move from son to father without choking on the shame of it.”
I hear a soft gasp from somewhere behind her. My stomach twists, and I press my hand against it without thinking.
I should say nothing. I know I should. Anything I say will only give her more to twist. But I can’t stand there and let her rewrite me into something filthy just because she’s hurt.
“I didn’t throw myself at anyone,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I want, but steady enough.
Camille gives a hard little laugh. “Oh, so it was mutual. That makes it better.”
I look at her and feel the humiliation giving way to anger. “No,” I say. “What would make it better is if you stopped trying to blame every ugly thing in your life on the nearest woman.”
Her face changes. “You think this is my fault?”
“I think Ethan is standing right there,” I say. “Try asking him why he told you he didn’t want to marry you.”
That gets her eyes off me for one second.
She turns to Ethan. “Answer her.”
He says nothing.
Of course he says nothing.
He looks pale now, less drunk than before and somehow even more pathetic because of it.
Camille laughs again, but now it sounds close to breaking. “That’s what I thought.”
Ethan is the first one to break the silence. He looks from me to Viktor and back again, and for once even he seems genuinely thrown. “You and my dad?” he says. “Seriously?”
There’s no smugness in it now. No performance. Just shock, plain and ugly and stupid in how naked it sounds in front of everyone.
I can’t even answer. What would I say?
Yes?
No?
It’s more complicated than that?
Your wedding just exploded and that’s the question you’re asking?
“He still loves you,” she says, looking at me over Viktor’s shoulder. “And apparently that wasn’t enough for you.”
I feel something cold settle inside me.
This isn’t about love. Not really.
It’s about possession. It’s about humiliation. It’s about the fact that Ethan made a coward’s confession and Camille needs someone she can actually punish.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You just keep ending up in the middle of it.”
That one hurts because there is too much truth in it.
I’m tired. Tired enough that the shame and anger and heartbreak have all started blurring into one raw, aching thing.
I can still feel the fallout with Viktor from the night before.
I can still feel the gun I saw in Camille’s drawer like a second pulse under my skin.
I can still hear Ethan in the hallway insisting the baby was his when he knew perfectly well he was just trying to make himself important.
And now this.
I look at Camille and say, more calmly than I feel, “If you want to hate someone, hate the man who stood beside you and said he didn’t want you. Don’t look at me because I’m easier.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her face tightens. Her mouth trembles just once before she gets it under control.
Then she says, very quietly, “You think I’m taking the easy way.”
“No,” I say. “I think you’re cruel when you’re cornered.”
Her eyes flash.
“And I think,” I go on, before I can stop myself, “that you’ve been waiting to use that photo because you wanted me more ashamed than you were.”
Camille is still staring at me when Alina’s voice cuts across the lawn.
“What is going on?”
No one answers her at first.
The guests are still watching. The musicians have gone silent. Viktor is standing in front of me, not touching me, but close enough that I can feel the tension in him. Ethan looks pale and unsteady. Camille looks like she’s being held together by rage alone.
Alina stops a few feet away, takes in the scene, and her expression changes almost immediately. “Camille,” she says. “What happened?”
Camille lets out a laugh that sounds wrong. “Ask your son.”
Alina turns to Ethan. “What did you do?”
He drags a hand over his face and says, “I told her the truth.”
“The truth about what?” Alina asks.
Camille answers before he can. “That he doesn’t want to marry me,” she says. “That he still loves her.” She points at me without taking her eyes off Ethan.
For a second Alina says nothing. She just looks at her son, and whatever she sees there tells her enough. “You said that to her now?” she asks, her voice lower.
Ethan looks away. “Yes.”
“In the middle of the wedding morning.”
He says nothing.
Camille’s face twists. “Don’t say it like he spilled a drink.” Her eyes widen. “Wait, you already knew about it, didn’t you?”
For the first time in her life, my ex-wife looks stumped. “Camille, Ethan is just being dumb. Its just nerves.”
Camille gives a short, cruel laugh. “He stood there and told me he couldn’t go through with it because he’s still in love with the woman who’s apparently been sleeping with his father.”
Alina’s head whips toward Viktor and me this time. “What? You and this girl? Is that why you’ve been defending her all this time? I can’t believe even someone like you would stoop this low.”
Anna is here now too. I don’t even know when she arrived, only that suddenly she’s standing near Alina, eyes moving from one face to another, taking everything in.
Alina looks at Viktor and says, “Tell me that isn’t true. She’s half your age and pregnant.”
Viktor doesn’t answer right away.
That’s answer enough for half the lawn.
Camille laughs again, but now the sound is breaking apart. “There. There it is. Everyone can stop pretending now.”
I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a nightmare that keeps finding new ways to humiliate me.
Before I can speak, Alina says, “Let’s not do this here.” Her voice is controlled, but only just.
Camille turns on her. “Oh, now you care where things happen?”
“Yes,” Alina says, and this time there’s iron in it. “Because you are in your wedding dress on the lawn in front of your guests, and if you have any pride left at all, you will stop shouting.”
Camille stares at her, breathing hard.
The whole lawn feels too exposed. Guests pretending not to stare and failing. Staff frozen at the edges of the scene. Bridesmaids clustered near the chapel, whispering already.
Viktor says, “Inside.”
No one argues.
Even Ethan seems to understand there are too many eyes here now and too many stories already being born.
Alina walks right up to Camille. “Please.”
“What if I don’t want to go inside?” she challenges.
“You’re lucky I have as much restraint as I do right now,” Viktor says quietly. “Especially with the stunt you pulled today.” His voice has changed. The anger is still there, but now it is held so tightly it sounds almost quiet.
Alina looks at him. “What?”
“Camille invited Mikhail Voronin,” Viktor tells her.
The words go through the group like a blade.
His name seems important.
Anna’s head turns first. Ethan blinks as if the name takes a second to land. Alina just stares at Viktor.
“What?”
“He’s here,” Viktor says. “On the guest list. Her invitation.”
For the first time since she stepped onto the lawn, Alina looks genuinely shaken. “No.”
Viktor doesn’t soften. “I just spoke to him.”
Anna’s face has gone very still.
Ethan looks from one to the other. “Voronin is here?”
No one answers him.
Alina finally finds her voice. “Why would she do that?”
“That,” Viktor says, “is exactly what I want to know.”
Camille’s expression changes for the first time since she came at me. Not guilt. Not exactly. More like fury interrupted by something she did not expect him to say in public.
Alina looks at her in disbelief. “Tell me that isn’t true.”