Chapter 4 - The Ring Box
Sloan noticed Thatcher's expression and immediately stepped between us, pasting a brittle, frantic smile onto her face.
“Thatcher, darling, don't listen to her. She's just trying to steal attention from us. You know how Merritt has always been—whenever anything is about me, she has to break a bone or start an emergency.”
Thatcher didn't smile back. He didn't even blink.
“She fell down the stairs, Sloan,” Thatcher said, his voice entirely devoid of inflection. “I watched you step directly into her path. I saw your shoulder drop.”
The ballroom seemed to drop ten degrees.
Mom let out a sharp, theatrical gasp. “Thatcher! How can you say such a monstrous thing about your own bride on your wedding day? The stress is getting to all of us!”
“I am not stressed, Blythe,” Thatcher replied, his eyes never leaving Sloan. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a small, velvet-covered square box.
He didn't open it. He simply held it between his fingers, weighing it like a piece of evidence.
Sloan's forced smile vanished, replaced by a look of genuine panic. Her manicured fingers fluttered nervously toward her lace bodice. “Thatcher... what are you doing? Why are you holding the rings out here? The guests will be arriving in forty minutes—”
“Last night,” Thatcher interrupted, his voice cutting through her like a scalpel, “after Merritt left in the taxi, I went back to review the security footage from the foyer cameras with the estate manager.”
Sloan's face went completely bloodless. The foundation on her cheeks suddenly looked like chalk against her pale skin.
“You... you looked at estate cameras?” she whispered.
“I wanted to see if the handrail was loose,” Thatcher said evenly. “It wasn't. But I saw something much clearer. I saw you look over your shoulder to time your step. I saw you deliberately hip-check your sister down a marble staircase while she was wearing a medical brace.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the ambient instrumental music seemed to fade into nothingness.
Mom rushed forward, her hands raised defensively. “Thatcher, listen to me! Sisters fight! They have a sibling rivalry that goes back twenty years! You can't blow this out of proportion over a silly family dispute—”
“A silly dispute?”
My voice cut through Mom's defense with the crisp authority I usually reserved for multi-million-dollar maritime salvage disputes.
I reached into the pocket of my blazer, pulled out a thick manila folder, and dropped it onto the glass display table beside the wedding flowers.
“Sloan didn't just push me down the stairs, Mom. She also needed to finance her dream wedding since Dad's allowance wasn't covering the remaining balance.”
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Dad appeared from the doorway of the groom's suite, adjusting his cufflinks with his usual air of condescending authority. “What on earth is going on out here? Why is everyone shouting?”
“Ask your daughter,” I said, nodding toward the manila folder. “Ask her why she used my corporate emergency card to clear a forty-two-thousand-dollar catering bill at midnight.”
