Chương 6 - Emily’s True Allegiance
Two days later, on Wednesday evening, the front doorbell of my small garden apartment chimed twice. I peered through the peephole to find Emily standing on my welcome mat, clutching a manila folder against her chest and holding a paper bakery box in her other hand. She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back into a messy bun, wearing an oversized gray university sweatshirt and zero makeup.
I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
"Hey," she said, her voice small, offering the bakery box like a white flag. "Cinnamon rolls from that bakery downtown you love. The ones with the extra cream cheese frosting."
I stepped aside, gesturing for her to come in. "Come in, Em."
She walked into my small living room, taking off her sneakers by the door with familiar domestic ease. My apartment wasn't grand—it had thrifted bookshelves, a secondhand velvet sofa, and mismatched botanical prints framed on the walls—but it was spotless, quiet, and entirely paid for by my own labor.
Emily set the pastries on my kitchen counter and turned around, her eyes welling with fresh tears. "I haven't slept since Friday night, Sophie. Brandon and I got into the biggest fight of our relationship after we left the restaurant. He told me that if my family was going to treat people like that—if my family was going to treat you like that—he didn't know if he could marry into this bloodline."
"I don't blame him," I said gently, filling my electric kettle with filtered water. "Brandon grew up in a household where people say what they mean. In our family, words are just smoke screens people throw out while they try to pick your pocket."
"He was right," Emily cried, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes. "He was totally right. And the worst part is, I let it happen. When Aunt Carol told you to sit at the kids' table, my stomach dropped through the floor. I knew it was cruel. I knew she was putting you down because you wouldn't give her money for her boutique rent last month. And I sat there, admiring my ring, because I was so terrified she would cause a scene and make Brandon think we were white trash."
"Em, you don't have to apologize anymore. You were caught in the crossfire."
"No, Sophie! Look at this!" Emily slammed the manila folder down on the kitchen island and flipped it open. Inside were printed bank statements, text message screenshots, and handwritten ledgers covering the past eighteen months.
"What is this?" I asked, looking down at the paperwork.
"This is the family group chat and the planning logs for the wedding," Emily explained, her hands shaking with anger. "After you left on Friday, Brandon demanded to see all the invoices for the engagement dinner and the bridal shower. Sophie... Aunt Carol has been running a complete financial syndicate using our wedding as the front."
I pulled the papers toward me, scanning the highlighted figures. My mother had collected over twelve thousand dollars from Uncle Rob, Uncle Greg, and Aunt Diane under the pretense of booking the wedding venue deposit, hiring the floral designers, and securing the rehearsal dinner space. Every single check had been deposited directly into Carol’s personal checking account—the very same account that had bounced at Rosewood Grill.
"She told my parents she needed cash deposits because the vendors gave discounts for paper money," Emily said, her voice shaking with disgust. "She stole twelve thousand dollars from my parents and my uncles. She used three thousand of it to pay down her luxury car lease, she spent four thousand on her trip to Florida, and she was planning to use your credit card at Rosewood Grill to cover up the fact that she hadn't paid the restaurant deposit!"
The depravity of the scheme took my breath away. Carol hadn't just tried to stick me with an unexpected restaurant tab; she was using me as the final structural support beam in an elaborate house of financial fraud. If I had swiped my card on Friday night, the banquet would have been settled, Emily’s parents would have assumed their twelve-thousand-dollar pool had covered the costs, and Carol would have walked away with thousands of dollars of stolen family money completely undetected.
"Did you show this to your father?" I asked, looking up into my cousin's pale face.
"My dad saw it two hours ago," Emily whispered. "He threw up in the kitchen sink. Uncle Greg is already on the phone with a corporate litigation lawyer. Sophie, Brandon and I canceled the big wedding. We canceled the ballroom, the caterer, the six-tier cake, all of it."
"Emily, no... don't cancel your wedding because of her."
"We’re eloping," Emily smiled, a tiny, genuine spark of joy breaking through her misery for the first time in days. "We booked two tickets to Saint Lucia for next month. Just me, Brandon, the ocean, and a justice of the peace. But before we leave, Brandon wants to make sure Carol Miller pays for every single lie she’s ever told about you. And my dad wants you to have this."
She reached into her purse and pulled out a cashier's check made out in my name for three thousand five hundred dollars.
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"What is this for?" I asked, pushing the check back toward her.
"It’s from my dad," Emily said firmly, pushing the paper back into my hands. "For the two thousand dollars Aunt Carol stole from you when you were in college for her 'tuition assistance' scam, plus interest. My dad said the Miller family has owed you an apology for ten years, and this is the first installment."
