Chapter 6 - Unmasking the Groom
The wedding day arrived with crisp, mocking sunshine.
Boston’s Back Bay was choked with limousines, black town cars, and television vans. The Grand Aurelia Hotel was the pinnacle of old-money luxury, its neoclassical limestone columns draped in white silk banners bearing the newly designed, intertwined monograms of the Vance and Sterling-Cross dynasties.
Behind the closed doors of the bridal suite on the fourth floor, Vivienne was sipping vintage Dom Pérignon while four stylists adjusted the ninety-carat emerald collar around her neck.
She didn't know that three floors below, in the hotel's central communications room, Marcus’s technical specialist had already spliced a wireless override receiver directly into the main audio-visual control board.
She didn't know that the two state troopers stationed at the main entrance were not there to direct traffic, but to confirm that both Vivienne Vance and Julian Sterling-Cross were physically inside the building before sealing the perimeter.
And she certainly didn't know that parked in an alleyway two hundred yards from the service entrance was an unmarked delivery van containing Evelyn Vance.
I sat in the back of the van, wearing the tattered hospital gown from Blackwood Grove over my bruised frame, the oversized trench coat draped loosely across my shoulders.
“Are you sure you want to go in like that?” Marcus asked, checking the slide on his concealed sidearm. “I could have bought you a dress. We could have walked you in there looking like a board chairman.”
“No,” I said, looking down at the frayed cotton hem of the gown, stained with the gray dirt of the Maine logging roads. “This is the uniform Vivienne bought for me. This is what fifty million dollars looks like when you spend it on treason. I want them to see every single cent.”
Through the live audio tap Marcus had placed inside the groom's dressing room, Julian’s voice suddenly crackled through our headsets.
He was speaking to his primary broker.
“Is the transfer staged?” Julian was saying, his voice tight with nervous energy. “The moment the priest says 'husband and wife,' the Bahamian corporate accounts must be active. I want the entirety of the Vance liquid reserve shifted out of State Street Bank before the closing bell today.”
There was a pause as the broker spoke on the other end.
Julian chuckled—a sharp, dismissive sound that sent ice water through my veins.
“Don't worry about Vivienne,” Julian sneered. “The girl is a narcissist who thinks she’s playing corporate chess. Once the merger documents are executed, she won't have voting control of the umbrella company anyway. She’ll have her parties, her charity galas, and her jewels, and I’ll have the capital. She actually believes I married her because she’s brilliant.”
Another pause.
“No,” Julian continued, his tone turning chillingly casual. “The sister was the only one with brains, and she’s ash in a New Hampshire cemetery. This one is just an expensive signature with a pretty face.”
In the van, Marcus shook his head in disgust. “Poetic justice is a nasty business.”
“It’s not justice yet, Marcus,” I said, checking the matte-black remote control in my hand. “It’s just setup.”
At precisely 2:05 PM, the wedding march began to echo through the grand ballroom.
Three hundred guests stood in reverence as the double oak doors swung open to reveal Vivienne Vance, radiant, triumphant, and dripping in stolen emeralds, walking slowly down the ivory aisle toward the man who had helped arrange her sister’s living death.
At 2:12 PM, my bare, dirt-streaked feet stepped out of the service elevator and onto the kitchen service tiles.
At 2:14 PM, I walked past the terrified pastry chefs, pushed open the soundproofed swinging doors of the banquet hall, and walked directly into the back of the Grand Aurelia ballroom.
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The rest was history.
***
