Chapter 6 - Emily Breaks Her Silence
Vanessa recoiled as if she had been struck across the mouth. "Daniel... no. You can’t do this. The guests... the press is downstairs! The New York Times is in the lobby! Our families have known each other for thirty years!"
"The dress was paid for by the Sterling Trust," Daniel said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. "The shoes were paid for by my company. The diamonds around your neck were a gift from my mother's collection for a bride who had honor. You are leaving this hotel with nothing but the clothes you arrived in."
Emily walked over to the settee. For years, she had carried the crushing weight of being the daughter who ran, the coward who left her older brother to face the empire alone while she scrubbed greasy plates in three-dollar-an-hour diners. But looking down at Vanessa, who was now weeping hysterically, clutching the tulle of her twenty-thousand-dollar skirt, Emily felt no pity. Only the cold clarity of survival.
"You knew Dad was dying, Vanessa," Emily said, her tone devoid of anger, which made it all the more devastating. "You visited him once in that hospital room. Do you remember what you said to him when Daniel went down to the cafeteria to get coffee?"
Vanessa’s eyes widened in horror.
"You leaned over his bed," Emily continued, "and you whispered that once he was gone, Daniel would be so broken, so isolated, that he would cling to whatever pretty face offered him comfort. You told a dying man that you were going to take everything he built and give it to the very people who destroyed him."
Daniel turned his gaze onto Vanessa, his expression shifting from disgust to something far more dangerous: a predatory, absolute wrath. "Did you say that to my father?"
"Daniel, she’s lying! She’s trying to poison you against me!" Vanessa wailed, crawling toward him on her knees, her veil tangling around her shoulders. "I love you! I’ve loved you since college! Everything my mother did—it wasn't me! She made me do it! She said we would lose our home if I didn't secure the wedding!"
"Shut up, Vanessa!" Margaret shouted from across the room, struggling against Marcus Cole’s grip. "Don't grovel to this arrogant bastard! He has nothing without our social standing! The Vance name is what legitimizes his new board!"
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"The Vance name is bankrupt," a deep voice boomed from the doorway.
Everyone turned. Standing in the entrance of the bridal suite was Jonathan Hayes, senior managing partner of Manhattan’s most prestigious white-collar law firm, flanked by two detectives from the New York Police Department’s Major Case Squad.
