Chapter 13
Brooklyn looked at the ruined front of her dress as if Sara had poured acid instead of champagne.
“You psycho,” she hissed.
Abbie stepped forward so fast Sara almost had to catch her. “Careful, Brooklyn. You’re already trending toward mistress. Don’t add unimaginative.”
Brooklyn pointed a shaking finger at Sara. “She attacked me.”
“With bubbles,” Abbie said. “Survive.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the terrace, shocked and delighted. That laughter finished what the montage had started. Brooklyn heard it and understood that the room had turned. Not politely. Not quietly. Completely.
She tried to wipe the champagne from her dress with both hands, but the wet silk clung awkwardly to her body and her phone slipped in her damp fingers.
No one rushed to help. Cameras kept recording.
For the first time all night, she looked less like an influencer and more like a woman who had mistaken lighting for loyalty.
Her face crumpled with rage. “This is why he came to me,” Brooklyn snapped. “Because you’re spoiled and cold and boring. You think your family’s money makes you better than everyone.”
Sara felt the insult skim across skin that had already been cut too deeply for it to matter.
Abbie tilted her head. “And yet you flew to her family’s resort wedding, drank her family’s champagne, wore her husband’s hoodie, and still couldn’t get upgraded to wife.”
Someone made a strangled sound behind a napkin.
Brooklyn’s eyes filled with furious tears.
Abbie wasn’t finished. “You didn’t steal a husband. You stole a loser who paid for his affair with his wife’s credit card.”
Brayden’s face flushed dark red. “Abbie, enough.”
“Shut up,” Sara snapped.
Brayden looked at her.
Sara faced Brooklyn, and for the first time all day, the other woman’s beauty seemed flimsy. A filter without good lighting.
“You didn’t win him,” Sara said. “You exposed him.”
Brooklyn’s mouth trembled. “He loves me.”
Sara almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“Then ask him what happens when he can’t bring you into my family’s clubs. Ask him where you’re going after this resort stops comping him upgrades because my name isn’t attached anymore. Ask him how inspiring you are when no one else is paying.”
Brooklyn looked at Brayden. Brayden didn’t look back fast enough.
That was the moment she understood. Not everything. Not yet. Women like Brooklyn took time to admit when the prize was cheap. But she understood enough. Brayden had sold her a life he didn’t own.
A man from the sponsor table stood, phone pressed to his ear.
He avoided Brayden’s eyes and walked off the terrace.
Two influencer guests who had spent the morning orbiting Brayden quietly deleted something from their phones.
A woman near the bar whispered, “Wasn’t he only even here because of her family?
” and didn’t bother to lower her voice enough.
Sara saw it happen in little pieces all over the room: distance, whispers, shifted chairs, raised brows, fresh uploads.
A notification lit her phone.
LUXELOVESCANDAL: We have footage. This honeymoon just went nuclear. ??
Sara turned the screen face down. Her mother rose from the front table. The terrace quieted for a different reason. Imogen Archmont didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
“Brayden,” she said, with the polished calm of a woman who had ended charity board feuds over lunch. “You will remove yourself from any Archmont family accounts, travel privileges, and club memberships by morning. My office will send instructions.”
Brayden’s eyes widened. “Imogen, please. This is between me and Sara.”
Sara’s father stood beside his wife. “It became our business when you used our daughter’s wedding as a stage.”
Brayden swallowed. “I love Sara.”
The lie sounded exhausted now.
A resort manager appeared near the edge of the terrace, speaking quietly to the event coordinator. Sara caught only part of it, but it was enough.
“Future charges will need to be assigned to Mr. Ellis directly.”
Brayden heard it too. His face tightened, not with heartbreak this time, but with arithmetic.
Sara stepped closer and removed her wedding ring. The absence of it was shocking. Her finger felt naked, but not weak. Just newly freed.
Brayden’s gaze dropped to her hand. “Sara, don’t.”
She turned his own champagne glass toward her. His fingerprints fogged the crystal. She dropped the ring into it.
The tiny splash sounded louder than it should have. Champagne bubbles clung to the band as it sank.
“There,” she said. “You wanted content.”
Brayden stared at the ring at the bottom of the glass.
Brooklyn let out a broken laugh that sounded close to hysteria. “You’re all acting like he forced me. He chose me.”
Sara looked at her one last time. “Then keep him.”
Brooklyn’s face changed.
Behind Sara, Dominic moved closer. Not in front of her. Beside her, but with enough space that she had to choose whether to lean into his presence. She did, only a fraction. Enough to feel the warmth of him at her back. Brayden saw it.
Jealousy flashed across his face, fast and ugly. “Is this what this is? You’ve known that guy for a day and suddenly you’re putting on a show?”
Dominic said nothing.
Sara almost smiled. Brayden couldn’t imagine a man choosing silence because the moment belonged to her.
“This is about you Brayden,” Sara said. “That’s why it’s so ugly.”
He stepped toward her. “We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Privately.”
“You lost private when you brought your mistress on my honeymoon.”
The terrace reacted to that. A low wave of whispers, phones, gasps. The title of the scandal writing itself in real time.
Brayden’s face twisted with panic. “Sara, please.”
She turned and walked away.
For the first time since she had opened Brooklyn’s villa story, she didn’t feel like she was fleeing. Everyone else had finally caught up.