Fifteen minutes before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, I found my own parents hidden behind a massive marble pillar near the service entrance sitting on cheap plastic folding chairs, stacked catering trays blocking them from view, while my fiancé Preston’s wealthy family occupied the entire front row of the ballroom like royalty—exactly the opposite of what I’d explicitly begged for when I told Preston the only non-negotiable rule of our wedding was that my parents sat front and center.

The fresh air hit my face like a cold shower.

I had been holding my breath for so long, I didn’t realize it until my lungs burned with the first real inhale.

My father had the car pulled around in under two minutes.

Old reliable.

The Ford F-150 he’d had since I was sixteen.

Dents on the passenger side from that time I’d tried to parallel park downtown.

Sticker on the back window that said “Proud Dad of an Honor Student.”

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I climbed into the backseat still wearing my wedding dress.

The silk crinkled.

The train bunched up around my feet.

My mother turned around from the passenger side.

Her eyes were red.

But she wasn’t crying anymore.

“Baby,” she said, reaching for my hand. “Are you okay?”

I squeezed her fingers.

“I’ve never been better.”

My father pulled away from the curb.

Behind us, I could see people pouring out of the hotel.

Cynthia was screaming into a phone.

Preston was talking to a group of men in expensive suits—his father’s lawyers, probably.

None of it mattered.

I rolled down the window.

Let the August wind tear through my carefully styled hair.

Let it carry away the last of the Claire who cared what the Vales thought.

We drove for twenty minutes in silence.

Then my father spoke.

His voice was steady.

Controlled.

The same voice he used when a customer was being unreasonable at the store.

The voice that meant business.

“I want you to know,” he said, “that if you had gone through with it, we would have sat behind that pillar and smiled. We would have done it for you. Because your happiness means more to us than any seat in any ballroom.”

He paused.

Glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

“But watching you walk up on that stage? Hearing every word you said? That was the proudest moment of my life.”

My throat tightened.

“Dad—”

“Your mother and I raised you to be strong,” he continued. “We raised you to know your worth. And for a while there, when you were with that boy, I was worried we’d failed. I was worried he’d broken that part of you.”

He shook his head.

“I was wrong.”

My mother was dabbing at her eyes again.

“Happy tears,” she said quickly. “These are happy tears.”

We pulled into the driveway of our house ten minutes later.

The little blue Cape Cod with the white picket fence.

The house I’d grown up in.

The house Preston had called “quaint” the first time he’d seen it—like it was a museum exhibit instead of a home.

I walked up the front steps in my three-thousand-dollar wedding dress.

Kicked off my four-inch heels.

And didn’t care when I scuffed the toes on the porch.

Inside, the house smelled like cinnamon and old books.

Everything was exactly as I’d left it three days ago, when I’d moved into Preston’s penthouse to “start our life together.”

The crocheted blanket my grandmother made draped over the couch.

The fridge covered in my childhood artwork and report cards.

The bowl of candy by the front door—my dad’s thing, for the neighborhood kids.

I sank onto the living room carpet.

The dress spread out around me like a white lake.

And that’s when it hit me.

The adrenaline was gone.

The anger was fading.

And in its place came something else.

Something worse.

My mother sat beside me.

She didn’t say anything.

She just put her arm around me.

And I cried.

I cried for the two years I’d wasted.

For the man I’d thought Preston was.

For the future I’d imagined that would never exist.

I cried until my head throbbed.

Until my eyes were swollen shut.

Until there was nothing left inside me but hollow.

My father brought me water.

Sat across from us in his favorite armchair.

Waited.

When I finally stopped, he spoke.

“Now,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

“What do you mean?”

“Those people aren’t going to let this go,” he said. “Cynthia Vale has spent forty years protecting her family’s reputation. You just destroyed it in front of two hundred of the most influential people on the East Coast. She’s going to come after you. Hard.”

He leaned forward.

“So I need to know. Do you want to fight? Or do you want to disappear?”

I thought about it.

Thought about Preston’s face when I mentioned Savannah.

Thought about Cynthia’s cold smile.

Thought about my parents sitting behind that pillar.

And I made a decision.

“I want to fight.”

My father nodded.

Like he’d known the answer already.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’ve been waiting twenty-six years for someone to take those people down. And I’ll be damned if my daughter doesn’t finish what she started.”

My phone buzzed.

Then again.

And again.

I pulled it from the hidden pocket in my dress.

Seventy-three missed calls.

Two hundred and twelve text messages.

Most from numbers I didn’t recognize.

But the top one was from Preston.

We need to talk. You have no idea what you’ve done. Call me. NOW.

I showed it to my dad.

He read it.

Snorted.

“Cocky little bastard.”

He took my phone.

Pressed a few buttons.

Handed it back.

“What did you do?”

“Blocked him. Blocked his mother. Blocked his sister. Blocked the entire Vale family and their company domain. You don’t need to hear anything they have to say. Not today. Not ever.”

He stood.

Stretched.

“Now, I’m going to make pancakes. The good kind, with blueberries. And then we’re going to make a plan. Because if the Vales want a war? They’re going to get one. But they should know one thing first.”

He looked at me.