Chapter 3 - THE RING HE FORGOT TO HIDE.
Madison looked at the bracelet on the floor, then at Ryan, then at Sophia. The outrage in her face wavered for the first time.
Ryan tried to recover.
“I took it back from her before Mr. Carter arrived.”
Sophia rose carefully with one guard’s help, keeping one palm at the base of her stomach. Her white satin wrap dress trembled against her knees. She did not look weak now. She looked cornered long enough.
“That bracelet isn’t the only thing he forgot to hide.”
Her words landed before anyone understood them.
Mr. Carter followed her gaze to Ryan’s left hand. The groom instinctively curled his fingers, but too late. The slim gold band flashed beneath the ballroom lights.
Madison stared. “Why are you wearing a wedding band under your ring?”
Ryan yanked his hand back. “It means nothing.”
Sophia’s laugh was small and devastated.
“That band meant everything when you put it on my finger in Cook County six months ago and promised I was your wife.”
The room inhaled as one body.
Madison stumbled backward as if the floor had shifted under her jeweled heels. “What did she just say?”
Sophia unlocked her phone and turned the screen toward Mr. Carter.
May you like
“I didn’t come here to stop a wedding,” she said. “I came because I already belong to it.”
Then she opened the file Ryan had prayed she would never show anyone.
