Chapter 3 - The Videos That Made Rachel Look Guilty
By Monday morning, twelve wedding clips were circulating through Mercer Event Group’s private staff chats.
None showed the service doorway.
Most began after Rachel was already screaming.
In one, she shoved Vanessa’s hand away.
In another, she knocked glasses from the cocktail table.
A third showed Diane trying to calm her while Rachel shouted that the cannon had been loaded intentionally.
Without context, Rachel looked furious, disoriented, and disruptive.
Vanessa sent the clips to the company’s three outside directors.
She requested an emergency board meeting.
Rachel read the email from her apartment with her left eye swollen shut.
Subject: Concern Regarding Rachel’s Judgment and Conduct.
Vanessa alleged that Rachel’s “personal hostility toward Derek” had begun affecting vendor relationships and culminated in a public breakdown at the wedding.
Derek denied tampering with the cannon.
He claimed Aaron’s footage showed them adding ordinary metallic confetti supplied by the venue.
Aaron disagreed.
He had spent Sunday preserving original media cards, camera timestamps, and backup files.
He also contacted the police himself.
“I don’t want this becoming one edited clip against another,” he told Rachel.
“You could lose clients.”
“I already have.”
Derek had worked with several venues Aaron depended on. Two Monday bookings had suddenly been canceled.
Rachel felt guilty.
Aaron stopped her.
“I chose to preserve what I saw.”
That sentence stayed with her.
Choice.
Everyone in the family kept describing the wedding as something that had happened to them.
Vanessa had made a choice.
Derek had made a choice.
Diane was making one now.
The emergency board meeting was scheduled for Wednesday.
Diane asked Rachel to take medical leave until then.
“From my own company?”
“Temporarily.”
“Vanessa attacks me, and I’m the one removed?”
“I’m trying to prevent further damage.”
Rachel knew exactly how that sentence worked inside the Mercer family.
Her father used it when sisters fought.
Diane used it when a client complained.
Prevent damage usually meant asking Rachel, the more predictable daughter, to absorb it.
This time she refused.
She retained an attorney and requested the financial records she was entitled to inspect as a shareholder.
Then she called the independent accounting firm Mercer Event Group used for annual reviews.
“I need every invoice from Sloan Event Fabrication for the last eighteen months.”
The accountant hesitated.
“Rachel, your mother called this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“That nobody should release company records to you until after the board meeting.”
Rachel looked at the wedding videos again.
May you like
Someone was working harder to stop her from reading invoices than to understand why metal had been fired into her eye.
That made the accounting problem more important than it had been on Friday.
