5. Wedding Dresses #2
I kept my eyes closed for the entire drive back to the condo. I listened to the steady hum of the tires against the asphalt, while sitting mere inches away from him. I was waiting for the evening to end so I could finally begin.
The condo was completely silent by midnight.
Just like every night since I’d found out the truth, I lay perfectly still on my side of the mattress. He was dead to the world, exhausted from the effort of playing the perfect partner all evening.
Not for the first time, I thanked my lucky stars that he hadn’t tried to have sex with me this week. If he had, I didn’t know what I’d have done. Blown my cover, most likely.
I waited another twenty minutes just to be certain. Then, I carefully slipped out from under the duvet.
The hardwood floor was cold against my bare feet as I crept out of the master bedroom. In the dark living room, I retrieved my laptop from my work bag, sat on the sofa, and opened the lid. The harsh glare of the screen illuminated the quiet space.
Marcus’s legal advice replayed in my mind. I opened a browser window and navigated to the Audi telematics portal. My fingers moved quickly over the keyboard, typing in my primary account credentials.
A dashboard loaded, displaying the car’s current location in our parking garage, its fuel levels, and a tab marked Security & Cabin Media.
I clicked it. A grid of cloud-stored video files populated the screen, organized by date and time.
I didn’t have to search long. Filtering the results to the evenings Daniel had claimed he was stuck at the firm finalizing client portfolios, I clicked on a file from Tuesday night.
The video player buffered for a second before the interior of the Audi appeared on my screen in crisp, high-definition night vision.
Harper was sitting in the passenger seat. Daniel was in the driver’s seat.
The audio kicked in.
“Tell me again,” Harper whispered through the small laptop speakers, her voice thick with insecurity.
Daniel reached across the center console and pulled her in for a deep kiss. When they broke apart, he looked her right in the eyes.
“I love you. Only you.”
Harper sniffled, looking down at her lap.
She lifted a small strip of glossy paper into the frame of the cabin camera.
It was a sonogram. It wasn’t very obvious, but what she said next made it clear.
“I hate this. I hate watching her plan a wedding with my boyfriend. We should be celebrating the birth of our baby.”
Daniel let out a heavy sigh, leaning back against the leather headrest. “I know, baby. I hate it too. But I need her to set up those joint accounts. Just give me a little more time to get the money sorted, and then I swear to God we’re done with her. I’ll take care of us.”
I sat in the dark, watching the man I was supposed to marry casually discuss my financial ruin. He sounded so annoyed. He was talking about gutting my entire life with the same exhausted frustration someone might use to complain about doing the laundry. And I felt nothing.
“When are you going to dump her?” Harper asked, tracing the edge of the sonogram.
Daniel let out a short, cruel laugh. “The second the ink is dry on her partnership shares, baby. We just have to play the game a little longer.”
I paused the video.
The frame froze on Daniel’s arrogant smile. I retrieved the small silver flash drive Leo had given me from my blazer pocket, plugged it into the side of the laptop, and downloaded the MP4 file directly onto it.
The progress bar filled instantly, safely securing the undeniable, timestamped proof of his fraud.
But I wasn’t finished. I needed something that Vincent Sterling and Daniel’s conservative parents couldn’t just brush off as a stressful argument out of context. I needed absolute, undeniable ruin.
I continued going through the videos until I finally found what I was looking for. A file from the previous week, timestamped at 11:45 PM. I hit play.
The audio hit me before the visual did. It was the heavy, wet sound of skin slapping against skin, accompanied by Harper’s breathless moaning.
My stomach churned as the night-vision footage loaded.
Harper was straddling Daniel in the driver’s seat.
Her dress was shoved all the way up to her collarbone, exposing her bare breasts to the cold cabin air.
Daniel’s pants were unzipped, his hands gripping her bare hips tightly as he thrust violently up into her.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” Daniel groaned on the recording, his voice thick and vulgar. “Take it.”
“Daniel, please,” Harper gasped, throwing her head back against the roof of my car as she rode him. “Don’t stop.”
He silenced her with a messy kiss, his hands squeezing her thighs as he picked up the pace, completely defiling the car I paid for.
I’d seen them kissing in the alcove and had heard them talking about the pregnancy. But this was new. Every grunt, every gasping cry was just another insult. And I forced myself to watch every agonizing, explicit second of it.
On the screen, Daniel’s lips twisted in an almost aggressive snarl as he came. Harper slumped on top of him as she climaxed. And then, she laughed. “I’m so much better than my sister, right, baby?”
Daniel snorted. “Understatement of the century. That frigid bitch can’t hold a candle to you.”
It was more than enough. I paused the video and downloaded the second file. Opening the default video editor on my laptop, I dragged both clips onto the timeline, stitching the financial confession directly into the brutal, explicit sex tape.
I saved the final presentation to Leo’s flash drive, ejected the metal casing, and shut the laptop.
The living room plunged back into darkness. Holding the cold metal drive in my palm, I stood up and walked down the hall to the spare bedroom.
I flipped the light switch. Hanging from the top of the closet door was my wedding dress, safely concealed inside an opaque garment bag.
Stepping closer, I ran my free hand down the length of the protective plastic. My mother had framed her decision to give her wedding dress to Harper as practical. I’d agreed with her, as much as it had hurt.
Looking at the silhouette of my own dress now, I was incredibly glad she had made that choice.
A family heirloom was a symbol of love. It was meant to be passed down with joy, reverence, and blind trust. The white dress waiting inside this bag had nothing to do with romance or a shared future.
It was a uniform. I was going to wear it to an execution. And one day, when I had a daughter of my own, I’d pass her my grandmother’s pearls and tell her, “Whatever you choose, stay strong. You are perfect and flawless—and no man can change that.”