Chapter 2
I replayed the recording from the beginning.
Every word landed like a knife.
Every laugh carved me open.
By the time the file ended, I could barely feel my hands.
Seven years.
That was how long I had known Isaac.
Seven years since the day he stepped into my life with warmth in his eyes and patience in his smile.
Seven years since he had become my safe place after my brother Nathan died.
My chest tightened at the thought of Nathan.
He had loved me more fiercely than anyone else in this world ever had.
If he were still alive, no one would have dared humiliate me like this.
My phone buzzed wildly on the desk.
Isaac.
I watched his name flash across the screen until it stopped.
Then another message came.
Did you find the footage, sweetheart?
I stared at it for a long moment before typing back.
Yes. I found everything.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Great. You’re a lifesaver.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I called Mia, my best friend.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Caroline? Are you okay? You sound—”
“Can you come over?”
My voice broke on the last word.
“I’m coming.”
Twenty minutes later, she was in my room, and I was showing her the file.
By the time the audio ended, Mia was pale with fury.
“That bastard.”
I nodded once.
“He’s going to cancel the wedding publicly,” I said. “He wants to destroy me.”
Mia looked at me, eyes blazing. “Then destroy him first.”
I inhaled slowly.
“I’m not calling off the wedding.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I’m going through with everything. The venue. The guests. The livestream. The giant screen. All of it.”
Realization dawned on her face.
“Oh.”
I met her gaze.
“He wants an audience? Fine. I’ll give him one.”
For the first time that night, my pulse steadied.
Mia sat beside me, grabbed my hand, and squeezed hard.
“What do you need?”
I turned back to the laptop.
“The wedding team sent over the ceremonial video this morning. I’m going to replace it.”
“With the dashcam recording?”
“With the recording,” I said, “and every piece of proof I can find.”
My voice sounded colder than I had ever heard it before.
Mia exhaled slowly.
“Caroline… once you do this, there’s no going back.”
I thought of Isaac’s laughter.
Of Evelyn’s soft, smug voice.
Of the years I had spent believing loyalty meant something.
Then I thought of Nathan.
And the old ache in my chest sharpened into something harder.
“There was never anything to go back to.”
I didn’t sleep that night.
I spent the hours until dawn collecting everything.
Hotel receipts.
Screenshots.
Anonymous photos that had started appearing in my inbox months ago but that I had dismissed as petty attempts to stir drama.
A bracelet receipt in Evelyn’s name, charged to Isaac’s private card.
Security footage from the underground garage of Isaac’s building, where he had once sworn he was working late while he kissed Evelyn against the wall like a starving man.
There was more than enough.
Too much, actually.
At five in the morning, Mia and I sat on the floor surrounded by empty coffee cups and printed evidence.
The room still glowed with wedding decorations.
White ribbons.
Cream roses.
A half-packed box of favors.
It all looked grotesque now.
Mia was the first to speak.
“What about your parents?”
I closed my eyes.
“They’ll find out soon enough.”
She hesitated. “And Floyd?”
At the sound of his name, something twisted sharply in my stomach.
Floyd.
The boy I had once loved with the blind devotion of a teenager.
The boy who had never chosen me.
The boy Isaac still hated enough to build an entire marriage out of revenge.
“I don’t care about Floyd,” I said too quickly.
Mia said nothing.
I stood and walked to the window.
Rain streaked down the glass, blurring the city into pale lights and shadow.
For years, Isaac had used Floyd’s ghost as if it lived between us. A joke here. A possessive comment there. A look whenever Floyd’s name surfaced at some event.
I had thought it was insecurity.
I hadn’t known it was obsession.
At seven, my mother knocked.
“Caroline? Are you awake?”
I opened the door before she could knock again.
The moment she saw my face, her expression changed.
“What happened?”
I handed her the laptop without a word.
She watched the file.
I stood across from her and let the silence fill the room.
When the recording ended, my mother looked older.
Then she set the laptop down very carefully and said, with terrifying calm, “Call your father.”
An hour later, both of my parents knew everything.
My father paced the room with murder in his eyes.
“That boy used our daughter to settle a score?” he said. “He thinks the Hart family will just swallow this?”
My mother was quieter, which was worse.
“Cancel everything,” she said.
I shook my head.
“No.”
Both of them looked at me.
“I’m not canceling it,” I repeated. “He wants to shame me in front of everyone. I want every single guest there when the truth comes out.”
My father stopped pacing.
My mother stared at me for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
“All right,” she said. “Then we’ll make sure he regrets the day he was born.”