The officer nodded once, businesslike. “All right. Let’s step over here and go through what you have.”
Alyssa lunged forward, grabbing my arm hard enough to hurt. Up close, I could see the panic under her anger. “You’re really going to do this?” she hissed. “On my wedding day?”
“You made it my problem months ago,” I said, pulling free. “You just didn’t expect consequences.”
While the guests watched from the sidewalk and the fire marshal moved in and out of the ballroom, I sat on the curb with the officer and emailed him the screenshots: vendor voicemails, the spreadsheet with my card listed, the bank alerts, and the message from Alyssa where she threatened to paint me as unstable if I didn’t cooperate. When I hit send, my hands stopped shaking. Not because it felt good—because it felt final.
Lucas appeared a few minutes later, damp suit jacket in his hands, hair wild like he’d been running his fingers through it all day. His expression was hollow, the look of a person who just watched his future collapse. He approached cautiously.
“Emma?” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how deep it went until last week.”
I studied him. I’d met him twice, both times with Alyssa clinging to his arm like a prize. He’d seemed polite, a little too eager to please my parents. Now he looked like someone who’d finally realized what he’d married into.
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