Chapter 1 - The Joke at the Bottom of the Stairs
“GET UP, MERRITT. IT WAS A JOKE!”
My sister laughed from the marble staircase while I lay at the bottom, unable to feel my right foot.
The quartet stopped. A champagne glass shattered. My knee brace had twisted sideways beneath my blush-pink bridesmaid dress, and every breath sent fresh pain through my leg.
“Call an ambulance,” I whispered.
Sloan leaned over the railing, her engagement ring flashing beneath the chandeliers. “You're always making things about yourself.”
My mother, Blythe, pushed past the guests in her silver gown. For one foolish second, I believed she was coming to help me.
“Stop embarrassing your sister,” she said instead.
“Mom, I can't move my foot.”
My father arrived, glanced at my twisted brace, and asked the photographer whether he'd gotten the entrance shot.
I was thirty-four. Eight weeks earlier, surgeons had reconstructed my torn ACL. Sloan knew I wasn't supposed to use stairs without support. She also knew I had begged to enter the rehearsal dinner through the elevator.
She'd refused. Every bridesmaid had to appear in the same photograph. Apparently the picture mattered more than the woman in it.
“Don't touch my leg,” I warned when Dad grabbed my arm. He pulled anyway. Pain made the ceiling swim.
Across the foyer, Sloan's fiancé, Thatcher, stood utterly still. He wasn't looking at the broken glass or the guests. He was staring at Sloan as though he'd never seen her before.
A waiter steadied me until a valet helped me into a taxi. Dad told him to take me back to the hotel. Once the car doors closed, I gave the driver a different destination.
“The emergency room,” I said. “Please.”
My phone buzzed before we cleared the gates. An unfamiliar number had sent a video of my fall. It showed Sloan hooking my good ankle with her heel, then driving her shoulder into my back.
Behind the camera, my cousin Bellamy laughed. “Oh my God. That was perfect.”
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The video didn't show an accident. It showed two women waiting for a moment they'd planned.
Then a second message appeared from the same number: “WATCH WHAT YOUR FATHER DOES AFTER YOU LEAVE.”
