Chapter 5 - The Video They Wanted Everyone to See
By noon, Sloan's version of the fall had spread through the wedding guests' group chat.
A short clip showed me stumbling down the last two steps, crying out, and accusing my sister while she stood above me. The crucial seconds—her heel catching my ankle and her shoulder striking my back—had vanished.
Sloan's caption read: “My sister's always resented me. Please give us privacy on our special day.”
Underneath, Bellamy had added a laughing emoji.
Greer looked at my phone. “They're counting on people never asking what happened before that clip started.”
Nora instructed me not to argue in the chat or publish my evidence while investigators were still collecting it. The venue might have its own cameras, and the full footage needed preserving.
Within an hour, the first flowers arrived at the hospital. They were from Thatcher's mother. Her card contained six words: “You should never have been hurt.”
I cried harder over that note than I had over my mother's text. One woman I barely knew had shown more concern than my parents had managed in thirty-four years.
Sloan called next. Her voice was syrupy at first.
“I hope you're feeling better. Look, things got out of hand.”
“You pushed me.”
“You lost your balance.”
“I have the full video.”
Silence.
Then the sweetness drained from her voice. “You think one ugly recording is going to make everyone turn against me? You don't know what Dad has on you.”
“I know he used my corporate card.”
“He saved the wedding.”
“Whose wedding needs forty-two thousand dollars from a person in an ambulance?”
Sloan said I was destroying the family, then hung up.
Five minutes later, the unknown sender of the original video contacted me again.
May you like
“I was working the event,” the message read. “I heard them planning it. There is more footage. Please don't let the hotel erase it.”
Attached was a photograph of Sloan, Bellamy, and my father speaking together beside the service entrance, just before I reached the staircase.
