MY WEDDING DAY TURNED UGLY WHEN MY MIL ORDERED ME TO SERVE 30 MEN LIKE A SUBSERVIENT MAID. I SAID NO. MY GROOM SL*PPED ME HARD TWICE, SO I STRUCK HIM RIGHT BACK….The second slap made the room go quiet. Then I hit my groom back.

Denise nodded. “Tonight. She said the filing office closes at nine tomorrow morning, and the deed needed to be recorded before the honeymoon.”

Megan let out a breath that sounded like a laugh. “The honeymoon. They were going to take her to Cabo and file the deed while she was on a beach.”

I stared at the floor.

Eleven months of dating. Seven months of engagement. Every sweet thing he had said, every time he’d told me I was safe with him.

I had been a project.

Claire appeared at the end of the hallway, her catering apron still tied around her waist. “Natalie,” she said, “there’s something else. I should have told you months ago.”

PART 5

We sat in the manager’s office with the door closed.

Claire kept twisting her apron strings around her fingers until they turned white. Torres stood by the window, taking notes. Megan sat beside me with a paper cup of water I hadn’t touched.

“Ryan’s my cousin,” Claire said. “Second cousin, really. We grew up in the same town. I didn’t see him for years, and then Linda called my company in August and asked for a quote. She said the groom’s family wanted to handle catering.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I was afraid of her.” Claire’s mouth twisted. “And because I thought maybe I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

She took a breath. “Ryan was engaged before. Her name was Jessica Pruitt.”

I had never heard the name.

“They were together two years,” Claire said. “She had a house from her father. Everyone said Linda loved her. Then the wedding got postponed, and Jessica stopped talking to people. About a year later she sold the house and moved out of state. I tried to call her, and the number was disconnected.”

“Maybe she just left,” Torres said carefully.

“Maybe.” Claire pulled out her phone. “But last week, I found her on social media. She’d blocked everyone from our family. So I sent a message from a new account. I told her I was worried.”

She handed me the screen.

The reply was short.

Is it Ryan’s new fiancée? Please tell her to run. Linda made me sign something on a night I’d had too much wine. I lost everything. I couldn’t prove it.

My hands went numb.

“She said that?”

“She said more,” Claire whispered. “She said Linda keeps a file on every girl Ryan dates. Their families, their property, their weak spots. She said that’s how they pick them.”

Megan swore under her breath.

“Why did you record today?” I asked.

“Because after I saw Linda’s notes about you, I knew I couldn’t stay quiet again.” Claire’s eyes filled. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

I looked at her, at the shaking fingers and the stained apron, and I did not feel angry.

I felt something much stranger.

I felt the first small stir of hope.

“Deputy,” I said, “I want to talk to Jessica.”

Torres closed her notebook. “So do I.”

PART 6

Ryan was booked that night on charges of assault, attempted fraud, and forgery.

Linda wasn’t.

She had walked out of the venue in her lilac suit with her chin raised and a family lawyer on the phone, and the deputies, lacking a signature of hers on any document, had let her go.

“It’s early,” Torres told me the next morning. “The forgery points to Ryan. Linda’s name is on the notary’s retainer, and that’s something, but she’ll say she was only arranging estate planning.”

“She told Denise I was too emotional to meet.”

“Denise is a good witness. We’ll build on that.”

I spent the night at Megan’s apartment, curled on her couch under a blanket that smelled like lavender detergent. My cheek had bruised in the exact shape of a hand. I stared at it in the bathroom mirror for a long time.

By noon, my phone had forty-one missed calls.

Some were from relatives I barely knew. Linda’s sister left a voicemail calling me “ungrateful.” A cousin said families “don’t air their laundry.” One message, from a number I didn’t recognize, was only a breathing sound and a click.

Then Ryan’s father called.

Walter Delaney had been quiet at the rehearsal dinner, a gray-haired man who mostly stared into his drink. I almost didn’t answer.

“Natalie,” he said. His voice was rough. “I don’t expect you to talk to me.”

“Why are you calling?”

A long pause. “Because I’ve been married to that woman for thirty-four years, and last night was the first time I saw it from the outside.”

I sat down hard on the arm of the couch.