Chapter 3 - The Price of Ruin
The foyer descended into absolute chaos.
Down the hallway, the murmur of four hundred guests began to swell into a confused roar as venue staff began discreetly closing the double doors to the main ballroom. The quartet abruptly stopped playing. A cellist walked out into the corridor, took one look at the bride sobbing on the floor and the groom surrounded by corporate lawyers, and quietly backed away.
My father, Richard Vance, finally appeared from the groom’s dressing lounge, smelling faintly of bourbon, his cummerbund slightly askew.
“What’s the hold-up?” he barked, adjusting his cufflinks. “Pastor Thomas says it’s fifteen minutes past—Eleanor? What the hell is going on?”
He stopped dead when his eyes landed on me.
For thirteen years, I had wondered what my father would say if we ever met again. When I was seven, he used to hoist me onto his shoulders at the county fair. But by the time I was fourteen, Blythe had won her first junior beauty pageant, and Dad had realized where the family’s social capital lay. From that moment on, I had become invisible—an inconvenient expense to be minimized, an awkward shadow behind his golden trophy of a younger daughter.
“Willa?” he stammered, his eyes widening. “What... what are you doing dressed like that? What’s happening?”
“Ask your wife, Richard,” Aunt Celia said bitterly, stepping past him toward the exit. “Ask her how much it costs to raise a thief.”
“Don't you dare speak to him like that!” Eleanor shrieked, her voice reaching an octave that caused several hotel employees hovering near the kitchen doors to wince. She grabbed Richard’s arm, shaking him violently. “Richard! They’re canceling the wedding! Reid’s uncle is threatening the firm! Do something! Call Judge Harrison! Call the governor!”
Richard blinked, his alcohol-dulled senses struggling to catch up. He looked at Arthur Sterling, then at Reid, who was already slipping out of his tuxedo jacket and handing it to one of the security aides.
“Arthur?” Richard said, his voice dropping into that hearty, golf-club cadence he used when trying to smooth over bad trades. “Arthur, come on now. Let’s go into the study and have a drink. Whatever little spat the kids are having, we can sort it out. Blythe is under a tremendous amount of stress. You know how brides get—”
“Save your breath, Vance,” Arthur Sterling said, his voice dropping like an iron curtain. “Your brokerage firm guaranteed the indemnification on the intellectual property Blythe signed over. You signed the notary block yourself as the managing officer.”
Richard’s face went from pale to gray, then to a sickly, mottled ash.
“You signed it?” Eleanor gasped, staring at her husband. “Richard, you said that was just standard pre-marital asset declaration!”
“She told me it was her trust fund allocation from her maternal grandmother!” Richard stammered, his voice rising in panic as he looked at Blythe. “Blythe! You told me it was just the paperwork for the condo down in Naples! You said Reid’s lawyers needed it signed before the rehearsal dinner!”
Blythe didn't answer. She was curled into a ball on the stairs, her veil tangled around her arms, weeping with an intensity that had nothing to do with heartbreak and everything to do with the total, catastrophic destruction of her carefully constructed world.
I stood there in the center of the storm, watching them turn on each other like starved animals in a pit.
For thirteen years, I had carried the shame they had handed me. I had carried the humiliation of that graduation dinner—the feeling that my mind, my diligence, and my integrity meant nothing because I hadn't been gifted the physical symmetry that made people stop and stare on the street. I had thought they were gods of social grace, untouchable in their country-club kingdom.
Now, looking at them, the illusion shattered into dust.
They weren't royalty. They were shallow, desperate, fraudulent grifters who had cannibalized their own family to buy their way into a world they couldn't afford.
Reid walked over to me. Without his formal jacket, wearing only his white shirt and waistcoat with the top button undone, he looked different. Less like an unreachable heir to a fortune and more like a man who had just narrowly stepped around a landmine.
“Dr. Vance,” he said, his voice quiet amidst the shouting match erupting between my parents and his uncle’s attorneys. “May I walk you outside? There’s a terrace car waiting, and I don't think you want to be here when the local press catches wind of this.”
I looked at him, then over his shoulder at Blythe, who had just lifted her tear-streaked face.
When Blythe saw Reid standing next to me—saw the respectful, almost protective way he stood beside the sister she had spent her life belittling—something inside her broke completely.
“You stole him!” Blythe screamed, pointing at me from the stairs, her makeup running in dark, grotesque tracks down her cheeks. “You couldn't get a man on your own, so you came back to take mine! You ugly, pathetic bitch! Look at you! Look at your hair! Look at your clothes! He’s only talking to you because of some stupid papers! He could never love someone who looks like you!”
The entire rotunda went dead silent again.
Even my father looked appalled, though whether at her cruelty or her complete lack of decorum in front of Arthur Sterling was impossible to know.
Reid stopped. He didn't turn around quickly. He rotated slowly on his heel, looking up the staircase at the woman he had intended to make his wife fifteen minutes ago.
“You’re right about one thing, Blythe,” Reid said, his voice cutting through the space with the cold precision of a surgical blade. “Beauty is an extraordinary gift. But Dr. Vance has spent the last decade using her mind to save the lives of terminal leukemia patients across three states. While you used your face to commit grand larceny against my family.”
He paused, letting his gaze sweep over her torn gown and smeared mascara.
May you like
“I’ve never seen anyone look uglier than you do right now.”
***