Chapter 7 - The Anatomy of a Parasite
Inside the Oakhaven bridal suite, the floor looked like a white-feathered battlefield.
Tiffany Vance—or rather, Tiffany Bennett, though the thought of sharing a surname with the woman who had just publicly humiliated her made her want to claw her own eyes out—was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, her designer gown torn from the hem to the thigh. She had used a pair of hotel embroidery scissors to savage the imported French lace, her manicured nails dark with purple ink where she had tried to scratch her name off the guest book.
Arthur Vance stood by the tall arched window, his phone pressed so hard against his ear that his knuckles were white.
“I don't care about the caterer!” Arthur roared into the receiver, his face mottled with purple veins. “I care about the twenty million dollars in municipal bonds that were supposed to clear tomorrow morning once the merger was announced! If the Bennett family trust is flagged for civil litigation, the whole deal goes sideways! Find out who that old hag’s lawyer is! Find him, bribe him, threaten him—do whatever it takes to get that cancellation rescinded!”
He slammed the phone down onto the antique mahogany desk so hard the glass screen cracked from corner to corner. He turned around, his eyes sweeping over Daniel, who was standing just inside the doorway with his head down, dripping wet from the evening mist.
“You,” Arthur hissed, stalking across the room until he was standing inches from Daniel’s face. “You told me your mother was a soft-headed country bumpkin. You told me she would sign anything we put in front of her as long as we let her sit in the back row and smile for the family album.”
“I... I didn't know,” Daniel stammered, shrinking back against the door frame. “She’s never acted like this before. She always caves. Whenever I told her about Tiffany’s needs—the venue, the champagne, the private jet for the bridesmaids—she just sighed and wrote the check. I thought... I thought she was just old and scared.”
“Old and scared?” Tiffany shrieked from the floor, her voice rising to a glass-shattering pitch. She scrambled to her feet, her tiara dangling by a single bobby pin over her right ear, her mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks. “She’s a vicious, manipulative old witch! She planned this! She waited until every single vendor was locked in, until the invitations were sent to the entire governor’s cabinet, and then she pulled the plug just to watch me crawl!”
“She didn't plan it,” a voice drawled from the doorway.
Marcus Vance, Tiffany’s younger brother and a junior partner in their father’s sketchy investment firm, strolled into the room holding a half-empty bottle of cheap house red wine he had stolen from the service cart. He took a long swig, wiping his mouth with the back of his silk-sleeved arm.
“Shut up, Marcus,” Tiffany snapped.
“No, really, Tiff, look at the facts,” Marcus said, grinning with teeth that looked too sharp for his mouth. “We didn't do our homework. I checked the registry office in the county seat about twenty minutes ago while you were having your little post-slap tantrum.”
Arthur turned sharply. “What did you find?”
Marcus held up his phone, the screen glowing with a scanned document. “The land—the forty acres of heritage timber and pasture down by the river—wasn't sold to some random developer like we thought. It was transferred into an irrevocable family trust yesterday morning. And the primary beneficiary isn't Daniel.”
Daniel jerked his head up. “What? Whose name is on it?”
“A conservation foundation,” Marcus said, his grin widening. “And a secondary clause giving lifetime habitation rights to a woman named Clara Higgins—your mother’s first cousin who has lived in Chicago for thirty years and hates your guts.”
Arthur’s breath hissed between his teeth. “So the land is gone. The cash from the sale?”
“Gone into an escrow account that requires two physical signatures—neither of which belongs to Daniel or anyone in this room,” Marcus chuckled. “In short, sister dearest, you married a penniless orphan whose mother just successfully executed the most elegant financial execution I’ve seen since the 2008 crash.”
Tiffany stared at Daniel. The silence in the room became absolute, heavy enough to suffocate a small animal. The illusion of the golden couple—the high-society wedding, the multi-million-dollar real estate portfolio, the Instagram-perfect dynasty—had dissolved into the humid Georgia night, leaving behind two empty-handed grifters and a boy who had traded his inheritance for a monogrammed cocktail napkin.
“Get out,” Tiffany whispered.
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“I said, get out!” She shrieked, lunging forward and striking him across the face with the heavy brass hotel key. “You lied to me! You said your family was rich! You said the land was worth millions and that you’d have the title in your hand by the time we cut the cake! Get out of my sight before I have security throw you into the street!”
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Daniel didn't fight back. He touched his cheek—where Margaret’s hand had been, and now Tiffany’s—and felt the symmetry of his failure. Without a word, he turned, stepped over the ruined tulle of his wife’s wedding dress, and walked out into the dark.
***
