Chapter 16 #2
She doesn't look at Blake as she approaches. She looks at her bridesmaids. At her mother. At the ocean behind the altar like it's an escape route she's already mapped.
Arthur Ashford delivers his daughter's hand to Blake with a single, unreadable nod. Then he steps back—not to his seat. To a position two rows deep, where he can reach the aisle in three strides.
Blake takes Natalie's hand. Beams at her.
She smiles back. Perfectly calibrated.
The officiant begins.
Welcome. Gratitude. The beauty and fruition of love. The joining of two families. Poetic nothings that float over the crowd like the floral arrangements—expensive and temporary.
A reading. First Corinthians thirteen: six. ‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.’
My spine straightens immediately. Recognition lands like a body check.
Natalie. I want to applaud her for skipping the two verses everyone expects—the soft-focus Love is patient, love is kind—and going straight for the forewarning no one else hears yet.
Blake is still grinning. Apparently not listening.
I watch Jane’s eyes widen. Then she’s watching Natalie—phone loose in her hand, thumb hovering over the screen.
The reading ends. The officiant looks at the crowd.
"Before we continue, the bride would like to say a few words." He passes the microphone to Natalie.
Blake's brow creases. "Nat?"
Natalie turns toward the guests. When she speaks, her voice carries across the venue with the clarity of someone who rehearsed this in the shower, in the mirror, in the dark hours between midnight and noon.
"There's something everyone needs to see." Natalie looks past Blake and gives Jane a small nod.
Jane taps her phone inconspicuously.
The screen behind the altar—the one rigged for a slideshow of the couple's love story, their first trip to Santorini flickers to a different feed.
Then Blake's voice fills the venue.
Not the charming, boardroom-polished version. The real one. The one I recorded in the King's Room two nights ago.
Strip club footage first. Grainy but unmistakable—Blake center-frame, grabbing the hair of the scantily clad woman who isn't his fiancée, spanking and laughing with the volume and abandon of a man who believes himself untouchable.
The crowd gasps.
Then his voice, audio and video crystal-clear:
"That's why we bust our asses, boys. So we can have it all. The respectable wife at home, the fun wherever we want it."
Cut. Another clip.
"Merger's bigger than feelings."
Cut.
“Come on, baby. Don’t do this right now. Later, Scarlett… I’ll make you so happy you’ll be screaming my name.”
Cut.
For one suspended heartbeat, nobody moves. The string quartet has frozen. A cellist's bow hovers six inches above the strings.
Then the space erupts into loud whispers and shifting bodies.
A society matron in the third row lets out a sharp, involuntary “oh!”
A man in the back mutters “holy shit” loud enough for a smack on his arm.
Blake goes white. Then crimson. The color change is almost medical.
"Turn it off!"
He spins. Searching for the source, for someone to bully, for a throat to seize. There are no controls in reach.
"This isn't—STOP THIS!"
His father rises from the front row. Fury etched into every line of a face built for corner offices and cold negotiations. Not fury at the exposure. Fury at the carelessness.
"BLAKE." Blake’s father’s voice carries the timbre of a man who has fired CEOs before coffee. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
Blake's eyes are wild. Scanning. They lock on Scarlett Thorne—standing near string quartet.
"Scar—" Blake's voice cracks toward her. Desperate. Grasping. "Stop it. Stop the video."
Scarlett’s frozen in the specific posture of a woman watching her career and her affair and her carefully constructed invisibility collapse in real time.
Then the final clip catches.
His voice. The speakers. Bright and casual and devastating:
"Scarlett means nothing—"
"Stress relief—"
"Replaceable."
"MEANS NOTHING?!" Scarlett fumes and throws her clipboard down. Then she storms the aisle.
"Move—MOVE!"
Guests flinch sideways like water parting. She shoves past a guest who doesn't move fast enough—he stumbles into a floral arrangement, orchids scattering across the sand.
Her heel catches in the sand. She lurches, recovers with the desperate grace of someone too furious for gravity.
"SCREW YOU, BLAKE HARTWELL!"
A teenager three seats over is filming with the steady hands of a generation raised on content creation.
Someone boos. Scattered at first, uncertain—then building as the crowd finds its consensus. The sound swells from isolated voices into a wall of collective disgust.
I scan the room for Jane. Good, she’s still seated.
Scarlett disappears past the perimeter. The booing follows her, then pivots back to the altar.
Blake's mother is sobbing. His father is bellowing something about contracts and liability. Blake wheels between them, hands spread, trying to contain a fire that's already consumed the building.
"This is a setup—"
"Someone doctored—"
A voice from the crowd, male, unidentifiable: "We can SEE it's you!"
Blake turns to Natalie.
The shift is instantaneous. Denial to recognition. Recognition to rage.
"Did you do this?!"
Natalie hasn't moved. She stands at the altar with her bouquet held loosely at her side and her chin lifted and an expression I recognize from athletes who've already won—they're just waiting for the clock.
"You humiliated me," Blake snarls. Lower now. Vibrating with something darker than embarrassment.
Natalie's voice is clear. "You humiliated yourself."
His eyes flick to the cameras. I watch the realization hit—every lens is pointed at him. Every phone. Every press photographer. His face, his voice, his confession, broadcast in real time to an audience that will never forget.
Shame spikes visibly. His jaw tightens. His shoulders draw up. And shame, in a man who's never been held accountable for anything, curdles into something dangerous.
"You Stupid BITCH—"
"This was about the MERGER—"
"Think of the contracts—"
"You needed me." Blake’s sense of entitlement is so thick it's almost a physical force.
"I CHOSE you—"
The crowd noise shifts again. Harder. Angrier. A man's voice: "Disgusting."
Natalie turns. Her father is already there—three strides from his staging position, hand on her elbow. Gentle. Certain.
"Come, sweetheart."
They start to move. Away from the altar. Away from Blake. Toward the aisle.
“Don’t you walk away from me!”
Blake lunges.
It's fast. Faster than I expected from a man whose primary exercise is golf. He covers five feet in three steps, arm raised, hand reaching for Natalie's shoulder with a grip that has nothing to do with reconciliation.
My body moves before my thoughts finish forming.
Two strides. I close the distance from my groomsman position at his right and intercept from the side. My shoulder drives into his midsection—mid-torso, controlled, textbook. The kind of hit I've delivered a thousand times on ice, calibrated for maximum disruption with minimum damage.
Blake goes down. We hit the altar platform together. I land on top, one hand on his chest, the other pinning his right arm.
He writhes beneath me. Swings wild—half panic, half rage—and I catch it on my forearm, feel the impact buzz through bone.
One clean strike. Open-palm, heel of my hand, directly to his sternum. Not his face. Not his jaw. Center mass. The kind of impact that empties lungs without breaking bones.
"Stay down. Or I’ll show you what a real punch looks like.”
He gasps. Blinks. The fight leaves him like air from a punctured tire.
I pull back immediately. Hands up. Visible. Clear of his body. Controlled.
Same instinct as dropping the gloves after a clean hit. Show the ref you're done. Show the crowd you're in control. Let them decide who started it.
"He was going to hit her." My voice carries. Deliberate. Projected for the witnesses, the cameras, the record. "Everyone saw it."
Confirmations ripple through the crowd. Nods. Murmured agreements. A woman in the second row: "He grabbed at her."
Security swarms, moving through the crowd with the efficient urgency of men who just earned their overtime.
I step back. Comply immediately—hands visible, posture open, no aggression.
Blake is hauled upright. Still gasping, face mottled, dress shirt torn at the collar from the impact.
He starts shouting—something about assault, lawsuits, his father's lawyers—and the sound gets smaller as security moves him toward the service road where the resort's private detail and two local police officers are already positioned.
Officers who are calm, practiced, probably accustomed to wealthy guests who believe the law is a suggestion. Quick statements from the nearest witnesses. Blake's wrists in zip-tie cuffs—the plastic kind that look temporary but feel permanent.
He's still shouting when they guide him into the security vehicle.
The press catches every second.
I don't watch him leave.
I'm scanning the crowd again.
For Jane.
She’s exactly where she was—fourth row, standing straight-backed and steady. She didn't run. Didn't flinch. Didn't move from her position because her job wasn't done until the last frame played and the last syllable landed and the bride was safe.
Our eyes meet.
She's okay.
I move toward Jane.
She’s shaking when I reach her. Not crying—operating on pure adrenaline, pupils blown, hands trembling around the phone
“Jane.” I take her phone and set it down. Take her face in my hands. “Look at me.”
She does. Focuses. “You’re bleeding.”
“Blake’s fingernail. Superficial.”
“He hit you?”
“I hit him harder.” I check her over. “Are you hurt? Did anyone touch you?”
"I'm okay." Her eyes search my face, then drop to my right hand. The knuckles are red but not split. "Are you?"
I flex my hand once. "I'm fine."
"The video was perfect."
"You were perfect."
A small laugh escapes her—breathless, disbelieving. "We did it."
I want to pull her against me. Want to bury my face in her hair and hold on until my hands stop shaking with residual adrenaline. But we're public. Cameras are still rolling. So I let my thumb brush the inside of her arm—once, slow—and watch her shiver.
"You tackled him," she says.
"He wasn't touching her." I hold her gaze. "Or you."
Her eyes go bright. She doesn't speak for a moment.
"I need to check on Natalie," she says finally.
"Go."
She crosses the wreckage of the ceremony—scattered programs, toppled chair, a crushed orchid from the altar arrangement—and disappears into the cluster of bridesmaids surrounding Natalie near the bridal tent.
I watch from thirty feet away. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to let Jane do what Jane does.
Natalie sees her coming. The composure she held through the entire exposure—through Blake's rage, through the crowd's reaction, through the takedown—cracks the second Jane reaches her.
She breaks into tears.
Jane catches her. Arms around the bride's shoulders, holding her steady while the white gown pools in the sand and the veil trails behind them like a surrender flag.
I can't hear what Jane says. But I see Natalie nod. See her grip tighten on Jane's arms. See the bridesmaids close ranks around both of them—Barbie's hand on Natalie's back, Katelyn crying openly, Merritt and Sloane flanking like bodyguards.
Natalie's father approaches. Shakes Jane's hand with both of his. Says something that makes Jane's chin wobble before she steadies it.
Then the Ashfords collect their daughter—gently, efficiently, the way wealthy families collect their wounded—and Natalie is guided toward the bridal suite, her father's arm around her waist, her mother smoothing the veil, the bridesmaids forming a protective wall between her and every camera still pointed in her direction.
Jane walks back to me.
Her mascara has smudged under one eye. Her hair is starting to escape its pins. The green dress has a sand stain on the hem.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"She's okay," Jane says. "Shaken. But okay. Her parents are taking her home tonight. Private plane that was meant for the honeymoon."
"Good."
The empty altar. The scattered chairs. The reception tent that won’t be needed. The string quartet packing up with the silent efficiency of people who’ve already been paid.
Guests file out in clusters—some shocked, some gossiping, some already on their phones to publicists and lawyers and tabloid contacts. Press is being corralled by resort security. Caterers hover outside the reception tent with trays of untouched canapés, waiting for instructions that won’t come.
“We really did it,” Jane says.
“You freed Natalie.”
“You punched Blake.”
“Tackled. And one hit.”
“My fake boyfriend is very protective.”
Fake.
The word doesn’t sting.
Like we both know it isn’t true anymore.
Her eyes lift to mine and hold there, steady.
Adrenaline is still burning through us. The kind that comes after a clean, decisive play. When every move hits exactly how you drew it up and the crowd hasn’t even finished cheering. Where everything is locked into place, and you realize you were exactly where you needed to be.
The wedding is cancelled.
The cameras caught everything they needed to catch.
Jane's face is composed. Steady. Not a flicker of doubt. She's watching the screen with the clinical focus of someone who knows exactly which clip comes next and exactly how many seconds until impact. She built this sequence. Curated every cut. Timed every silence for maximum devastation.
And she's executing it flawlessly.
That’s enough.
There’s no drop in my chest. No crash.
Just a ringing stillness, like the silence after a perfect play—when the puck is already in the net and the arena hasn't caught up yet.
I step into her space.
Jane looks up like she already knows what I’m about to do. Like she feels the same current running between us.
I take her face in my hands and kiss her. Not rushed. Not reckless. Just sure.
She laughs against my mouth, soft and surprised, fingers curling in my shirt like she’s been waiting for this.
When I pull back, she’s still smiling.
“How about we get out of here,” I say.
I hold out my hand.
She takes it—no hesitation, no doubt.
“Thought you’d never ask.”