Chapter 2 - The Wedding Everyone Wanted to Save
Rachel spent the rest of Vanessa’s wedding in the emergency department at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.
Her cornea was badly scratched, and a small metallic fragment had lodged beneath the tissue near the outer edge of her eye. The ophthalmologist removed it and warned that swelling could affect her vision for several days.
“We’ll know more after it settles,” he said.
Rachel’s mother sat beside the bed twisting a tissue between her fingers.
“It could still have been a joke that went too far.”
Rachel turned her good eye toward Diane.
“She poured metal into it.”
“We haven’t seen the whole video.”
“Aaron showed us.”
“Vanessa was drinking. Derek was drinking. Weddings are chaotic.”
Rachel laughed once, then winced because even that hurt.
Diane lowered her voice.
“Please don’t call the police tonight.”
Rachel stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because there are three hundred people downstairs, half of them clients or vendors. The Mercer name is on every table card.”
Mercer Event Group had started as Rachel’s father’s catering company twenty-nine years earlier. By the time Thomas Mercer died, it handled corporate events, university fundraisers, and large private weddings throughout central Ohio.
Diane owned forty percent.
Rachel and Vanessa each owned thirty.
Rachel was chief financial officer.
Vanessa ran branding and client experience.
Derek owned Sloan Event Fabrication, one of the company’s preferred rental vendors.
That arrangement had caused arguments long before the wedding.
Two days earlier, Rachel had frozen a $74,000 payment to Derek’s company after finding duplicate equipment invoices.
Vanessa had accused her of humiliating Derek before their wedding.
Rachel promised they would review everything Monday.
She had not expected her sister to answer an accounting dispute with a loaded confetti cannon.
Her phone vibrated.
A family group message from Vanessa.
Rachel turned a harmless wedding prank into a hospital drama because she can’t stand one day not being about her.
Diane saw it.
“That needs to stop,” Rachel said.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“No. I mean all of this.”
She called Columbus police and asked to make a report.
Diane closed her eyes.
“You understand what this could do to the business?”
Rachel looked at the bandage covering her left eye.
“For once, Mom, I’m asking what the business has already done to us.”
A nurse entered carrying a clear evidence container.
Inside lay the fragment removed from Rachel’s eye.
It was not decorative confetti.
May you like
It was cut aluminum.
The same material used in several custom fixtures manufactured by Derek’s company.
