Chapter 5 - The Preferred WomanVanessa finally stepped away from the bridal chair.
She looked smaller without it.
Emily watched her carefully.
“You knew he planned to replace me today.”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“Daniel said the marriage was already dead.”
“Before or after my father’s financing?”
Vanessa said nothing.
Daniel interrupted.
“Leave her out of this.”
Emily turned.
“You placed her in my chair.”
Silence.
“You don’t get to make her invisible now.”
Vanessa looked at Daniel.
For the first time, resentment appeared.
“He told me the deal had closed.”
Emily stared.
“What else?”
Vanessa hesitated.
Evelyn said:
“You owe her nothing.”
Emily looked at the older woman.
“That is how your family survives.”
“What?”
“By deciding truth is a privilege.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Then spoke.
Daniel had promised that after the Bennett financing became irrevocable, the wedding would be stopped.
Emily would be pressured into signing a private separation agreement.
The family would claim she suffered an emotional breakdown caused by wedding stress.
Vanessa would later appear publicly beside Daniel as an old family friend supporting him through a difficult period.
Within a year, they would marry.
Emily looked at Daniel.
“You planned to call me unstable.”
“No.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“Yes.”
Daniel glared at her.
She continued.
“Your mother had the statement prepared.”
Evelyn went still.
Mr. Brooks looked toward her.
“What statement?”
Vanessa removed a folded page from her small purse.
A press release.
Dated that day.
The Prescott family requests privacy as Emily Bennett receives care for an acute emotional crisis.
Emily read it twice.
No mention of the shove.
No mention of Vanessa.
No mention of the family’s debt.
Only a troubled bride.
Evelyn said:
“It was a contingency.”
Emily looked at her.
“No.”
“It was a story.”
A pause.
“And you wrote it before you gave me something to cry about.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“I never approved that release.”
Vanessa looked at him.
“You approved the settlement.”
Silence.
She handed Emily another document.
A proposed payment of twenty million dollars in exchange for silence, withdrawal from the wedding and confirmation that the incident resulted from “mutual emotional escalation.”
Emily almost laughed.
They planned to buy her dignity using money borrowed from her own family.
Then she noticed the payment source.
May you like
Not Prescott Hotels.
The Bennett bridge-loan account.
Related Stories
