Chapter 6 - The Shattered Glass
Aean took two slow, measured steps into the room. He didn't look at the crystal chandelier, the sixty-eight-thousand-dollar floral arrangements, or his future father-in-law leaning drunkenly against the wet bar.
He looked at the laptop screen.
Declan had not turned it off. The freeze-frame of Talia’s triumphant, laughing face while I bled on the carpet was still glowing in bright, unyielding 4K resolution.
“Aean!” Talia’s voice flipped instantly.
The snarling, feral monster that had been stomping on her veil vanished. In its place was the fragile, trembling, tearful maiden she had played for him for two years. She rushed forward, gathering her skirts in both hands, her lip quivering with rehearsed tragedy.
“Aean, thank God you’re here!” she sobbed, reaching out toward his chest. “Mave brought these... these thugs into my room! They doctored a video, they’re threatening me, they’re trying to extort money from my parents! Tell them to leave! Call hotel security, Aean, please!”
Aean didn't catch her.
When she reached for his chest, he took a single, deliberate step to the left.
Talia stumbled, her satin shoes slipping on the silk veil she had discarded on the rug, barely catching herself against the arm of the chaise lounge.
Aean looked down at his lapel. With steady, methodical fingers, he unpinned the white bridal rose. He looked at it for two seconds, then dropped it onto the floor directly into Eleanor’s spilled mimosa.
“I heard you,” Aean said.
His voice wasn't loud. It was terrifyingly quiet. The sound of an architect looking at a foundation and realizing every single measurement was rotten from the earth up.
“What?” Talia whispered, blinking through her fake tears.
“Last night,” Aean said, his eyes finally lifting to meet hers. “When you stood by the door. I was twenty feet away by the alcove. I heard you whisper to yourself before you slammed it.”
Talia’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
“I thought I was crazy,” Aean continued, his voice trembling with a mixture of self-loathing and disgust. “I thought, *There’s no way the woman I’m going to marry could be that evil. There’s no way she could look at her own sister, who just had bone surgery, and deliberately try to break her.* I told myself I misheard you. I told myself you were just running to catch the door.”
He turned to the laptop, looking at the frame showing the brass wedge jammed into the hinge.
“You brought a wedge from the table,” he said, his voice cracking with pure contempt. “You planned it while we were eating the main course.”
“Aean, no!” Talia cried, throwing herself onto her knees in front of him, clutching at his tuxedo trousers. “It wasn't like that! She provoked me! She’s been whispering horrible things to me all week! She told me you were only marrying me for my family’s money!”
Aean let out a dry, bitter laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over asphalt.
“What family money, Talia?”
The entire room froze.
Richard Vance looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
“What are you talking about?” Talia stammered, looking between Aean and her father.
Aean reached into his inner tuxedo pocket and pulled out a folded document.
“Your father asked my father for a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bridge loan last night during the cocktail hour,” Aean said, his eyes burning into Richard’s pale, sweat-streaked face. “He told my dad that his firm was facing a federal tax lien, and that if my family didn't cover the wedding expenses, the checks to the vendors would bounce before the ceremony.”
Aean looked down at Talia, his disgust so profound he couldn't even stand to look at her hair.
“You told me your parents set up a five-hundred-thousand-dollar trust fund for our first home,” Aean said. “You told me you bought this dress with your own savings. You’ve been lying to me since the day we met. Every single word out of your mouth is a manufactured, narcissistic lie.”
“Aean, son, please,” Richard pleaded, stepping forward, his hands shaking. “Let’s discuss this like gentlemen. The stress of the weekend—the financial pressures—we can work this out! The guests are already arriving at the cathedral!”
“The cathedral?” Saraphina interrupted, her voice ringing through the suite with cold, corporate finality.
Saraphina turned to Mark Higgins, who pulled out his cell phone.
“At 8:15 AM,” Higgins announced, reading from his screen, “Vance-Holt Infrastructure formally filed an emergency criminal fraud affidavit with First American Corporate Banking. The sixty-eight-thousand-dollar charge authorized by Eleanor Vance has been officially frozen and reversed under federal anti-fraud protocols.”
Eleanor let out a sharp, choked gasp.
Declan stepped forward, adjusting his earpiece.
“And because the St. Jude Grand Hotel has not received payment for the Grand Ballroom, the catering services, the floral installations, or the Penthouse Suite,” Declan added smoothly, “I have just instructed the hotel’s operations manager to lock the Grand Ballroom doors and turn away all incoming guests.”
“No!” Talia shrieked, leaping to her feet like a wild animal. Her hair was completely ruined, hanging in tangled mats around her face, her eyes bloodshot and wild. “No! You can't do that! My wedding! My photos! *Vogue* was going to feature the mezzanine shot! You can't cancel my wedding!”
“There is no wedding, Talia,” Aean said.
He reached down to his left hand. He pulled off the platinum engagement band he had given her two years ago—the one she had returned three times to the jeweler to get a larger diamond. He didn't hand it to her.
He walked over to my wheelchair.
Aean knelt down beside my right leg, looking at the stainless-steel pins protruding through my skin, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes.
“Mave,” he whispered, his voice breaking with genuine, shattering remorse. “I am so sorry. I am so God-damned sorry I didn't stop her. I saw her move toward that door, and I was too slow. I will never forgive myself for that.”
He took my cold, trembling hand and placed the platinum ring into my palm.
“Take this,” Aean said quietly. “Sell it. Use it to pay whatever Dr. Thorne charges for the next surgery. And if you need a witness for the grand jury, I will be the first man on the stand.”
May you like
Then Aean Sterling stood up, turned his back on the Vance family, and walked out of the Penthouse Suite without looking back once.
---
