Behind Adrian, Celeste Vale took three slow steps down the altar stairs.

Her heavy satin train hissed against the marble floor.

Her bouquet of white orchids trembled in her hands.

“Adrian, what is happening?” Celeste asked, her voice sharp with rising panic. “Why are we stopping?”

Adrian did not answer her.

He was staring at me, his chest rising and falling beneath his silk vest.

“You ruined this,” he whispered. “You planned this.”

“I protected my daughter,” I said. “The daughter you tried to erase.”

Margaret stood up from the velvet pew, her long silk dress rustling.

She turned her cold, grey eyes onto me.

“You think you have won something, Vivian,” Margaret said. “But you have only started a war with a family that owns the courts.”

“We are prepared for that, Mrs. Whitmore,” Grace Monroe said, pulling a second document from her leather briefcase. “This is a copy of the injunction we filed in federal court twenty minutes ago, preventing any modification of the trust terms pending a full audit.”

Margaret looked at the paper, then at the bishop who stood by the altar.