Chapter 4

Hester laughed and nudged a piece of porcelain with the tip of her heel.

“You should be grateful I even bothered to slap you myself. And this?” She swept a hand toward the floor. The diamond Scott had just given her caught the light. “How much were you hoping to get out of us for a table full of junk?”

“Pick up the piece by your shoe, Hester. Look at the glaze.”

She kept her foot where it was.

“That was a Song dynasty celadon vase. The white jade bracelet under the table is broken in two. Every piece came from my parents’ collection. Some of them had survived nearly a thousand years before you got your hands on them.”

“Bring in an appraiser,” I said. “I’d like everyone who watched you break it to hear what it’s worth.”

The man who’d held the rooster bent forward again. This time, two more guests leaned out of their pews to look.

“Song dynasty,” she repeated. “You expect us to believe a woman like you has a house full of Chinese antiques?”

My phone rang inside my clutch.

It was my mother. She and my father had stayed away because half the guests would have recognized them. We’d agreed she’d call after the vows. By now, I was supposed to be next door in the ballroom, waiting for Scott to make a toast.

“Elise, sweetheart.” My mother sounded as if she were smiling. “How did it go? Is Scott treating you well?”

I looked down at the wine drying on my gown.

“He called off the wedding and proposed to Hester. She slapped me and broke the gifts you sent. Now they want an apology and ten million dollars.”

“What?”

I heard a chair scrape on the other end. Then my father took the phone.

“Elise, tell me exactly what happened. I’ll send someone to get you right now.”

Scott snatched the phone before I could answer and switched it to speaker.

“So you’re her father.” He held the phone at chest height, where everyone around him could hear. “Let me save you the trouble of calling my old man. Whatever favor you did for my grandfather, it doesn’t buy your daughter a place in this family. I wouldn’t marry her if you begged me.”

My father let him finish. When he spoke, his voice was so level that I could hear every word over the noise in the chapel.

“You called off an agreement our families made when you were a child. Did Richard give you his permission to do that?”

Scott’s mouth tightened at the sound of his father’s first name.

“Richard Delgado spent his life learning when to speak and when to listen,” my father continued. “Put him on. He’s the one who gave me his word.”

“You watch how you talk about my father,” Scott snapped. “You couldn’t even show up for your own daughter’s wedding, and now you think you can tell us how to run our family?”

“Look around, Scott,” Hester said. “Where would he sit? Half the people in here probably spend more on dinner than he makes in a month.”

She took the phone out of Scott’s hand. He let her.

“Listen, old man. You’ve got thirty minutes to get here with ten million dollars. You’re going to get down on your knees in front of Scott and his father and beg their forgiveness.”

She paused to look at me. Behind her, one of the men who’d blocked the aisle shifted closer.

“If you’re late, I’ll let the men here decide how to keep your daughter entertained. Consider that a promise from the future Mrs. Delgado.”

There was a short silence. I knew my father well enough to know what it cost him to wait before answering.

“Tell Richard to wait for my people,” he said. “When they get there, he can decide how much of this he wants to answer for.”

Hester’s smile faltered. She looked at Scott, as if he might explain why a man she’d just threatened hadn’t even asked her to spare his daughter.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Let’s see how long you keep talking like that.”

She ended the call and threw the phone back at me. I caught it against my ribs.

“You heard me, Elise. Thirty minutes. After that, whatever happens is on you.”

My father was at the estate. Even if his pilot already had the jet on the runway, he was an hour away. Whoever he meant to send would have to be close.

I put the phone back in my clutch.

“You picked yourself a hell of a bride, Scott. If I were you, I’d start praying Richard picks up when my father calls.”

For half a second, Scott looked past me toward the doors. Then he saw his men still standing there and turned back.

“Give it a rest, Elise. I’d love to see who’s coming to get you.”

“Nobody’s coming,” Hester said.

For the next few minutes, the organist’s bench stayed empty and nobody went next door for dinner. Then voices rose outside. One of Scott’s men put a hand out to stop whoever was coming in. A second later, he dropped it and stepped back.

The doors opened. A middle-aged man in a dark suit walked into the chapel with armed officers on either side of him. I recognized him before the people in the back pews began to stand.

Scott straightened his jacket. For a moment, he seemed to think the man had come to speak to him.

The man walked right past him and came straight to me.