Chapter 1 - The Marriage Certificate on the Marble
Austin Hale swung the tire iron into the marble beside Monica’s injured knee hard enough to send a white chip skittering beneath the dining table.
“You destroyed my wedding,” he said, staring straight into her face. “Now I’m teaching you what happens to family traitors.”
Monica recoiled against the overturned chair, one hand protecting her knee and the other searching blindly for the phone Austin had kicked across the foyer.
Thirty-four candles still burned on the birthday cake behind him.
It had been Monica’s birthday dinner.
Twenty minutes earlier, relatives had been singing to her.
Now her brother was standing over her with a tire iron.
Their mother, Amanda, watched in an emerald-green dress with the same cold expression she used when a waiter brought the wrong wine.
Monica dragged herself toward the phone.
Amanda stepped forward and pushed it farther away with the heel of her shoe.
“Your brother lost a wealthy fiancée because of you,” she said. “Stop crying and accept what you earned.”
Naomi Prescott had been supposed to marry Austin the following Saturday at a resort in La Jolla.
She was thirty-three, a commercial real-estate attorney, and came from a family with money, although Monica never understood why Amanda talked about Naomi’s finances as if they were a family achievement.
Three days earlier, Naomi had called Monica with an ordinary wedding question.
The county clerk needed documentation from Austin’s previous marriage.
Austin had told Naomi he had married a woman named Kathleen Mercer five years earlier and received an annulment six weeks later.
Naomi could not find the annulment.
Neither could Monica.
What Monica did find was a valid San Diego County marriage record.
Austin Hale and Kathleen Marie Mercer.
No divorce.
No annulment.
No dissolution.
Monica sent Naomi the record.
Naomi canceled the wedding before sunset.
Austin blamed Monica.
Now he grabbed her ankle and dragged her backward across the floor when she reached for the phone.
The movement knocked Monica’s handbag over.
Naomi’s canceled wedding invitation slipped out.
Austin saw it, snatched it up, and crushed it in his fist.
Amanda laughed.
That gave Monica the half-second she needed.
She grabbed the pedestal beneath the birthday cake and drove it into Austin’s shins.
Cake collapsed onto the marble.
Austin stumbled.
Monica lunged.
Amanda caught a fistful of her dress, but the fabric tore loose.
Monica got the phone.
She pressed emergency call.
Austin’s face changed the second the dispatcher answered.
“My brother attacked me with a tire iron,” Monica said, forcing the words through pain. “My mother is helping him.”
Austin lunged.
Monica curled around the phone.
Amanda grabbed his arm.
Not to protect Monica.
To stop him from speaking.
“Hang up,” Amanda hissed. “If they ask about Kathleen, everything comes out.”
Austin froze.
Monica turned toward her mother.
Amanda realized what she had said.
Then her handbag, knocked open during the struggle, tipped sideways.
A certified marriage certificate slid halfway onto the floor.
Austin Hale.
Kathleen Mercer.
Five years earlier.
Amanda broke eye contact.
Monica looked at the certificate, then at the woman who had just told her everything would come out.
May you like
Sirens were already approaching.
For the first time, Monica understood that Austin’s secret marriage was not the secret they were most afraid of.
