Betrayed at My Own Wedding, So I Exposed Them All

The wedding was almost here, so I brought my parents, who had traveled a long way to get here, to see the house.

Only the smart lock wouldn't read my face no matter what I did.

I called my girlfriend, Delilah Sullivan. She sounded bored.

"Oh, I've been swamped at work lately. Philip Fox's the one keeping an eye on the renovation for us."

"To make coming and going easier, I deleted your face for now."

That got under my skin a little.

"The lock can store five faces, right? Why delete mine?"

"You're hardly ever here."

"My dad, my mom, me and Philip, plus his dog. That's exactly five."

Earlier, Delilah had told me her father had cancer. Not only did she take back the deposit on the wedding house, she'd asked for another $58,800 on top of the engagement dowry payment.

My parents couldn't stand to see me squeezed like that, so they'd paid for the whole house in full for me.

And now here I was with my parents, treated like strangers, shut out at the door of the very house we'd bought,

while her male secretary and his dog could stroll in and out as they pleased.

Staring at the lock's display, watching it mechanically repeat those two words, "Unknown Person,"

I thought: this door, this marriage, wasn't something I absolutely had to walk through.

My parents had been on the road for hours, and the exhaustion showed on their faces.

……

Seeing how dark my expression had gone, my mother gave me a gentle tug and murmured for peace.

"Maybe the machine's broken. Why don't we just come back another day."

My father said nothing. He only quietly shifted the bag of hometown goods to his other hand.

It was the cured meat and dried bamboo shoots he'd carried all the way from home, saying he wanted his daughter-in-law to taste the flavors of where we came from.

Just as we were about to leave, Delilah's secretary, Philip, came walking up with a poodle on a leash.

He scooped the dog up and held it in front of the camera.

The machine chimed in a sweet female voice.

"Household member, Mimi. Welcome home!"

Philip looked down his nose at me.

"Aaron Pruitt, I'm a very busy man. Next time you want to see the house, kindly make an appointment first."

With that he walked in like he owned the place. A row of cartoon slippers sat lined up by the entryway.

My parents were bending down to change into them when he wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Those slippers are all mine. I'm kind of a germaphobe, so maybe you two should just come in barefoot."

Rage surged up in me, and my mother tugged at my sleeve.

"Aaron, he's only doing his job for Delilah. Don't give him a hard time."

I forced the anger down and watched my parents slip off their shoes at the door, wipe the soles of their feet again and again with their socks, and then step gingerly inside.

Inside, the whole place was drowning in that cheap, flashy influencer look, nothing at all like the clean, simple style I'd signed off on.

The bedroom that was supposed to be for my parents had a sign hanging on the door that read "Pet Paradise."

The room was littered with dog toys. It had become a kennel.

Philip crossed his arms, every inch the man of the house.

"Ms. Sullivan felt bad about me having nowhere to go when I work late, so she set aside a room just for me and Mimi."

"This place is in a prime location, worth a fortune per square foot. It's not somewhere just any stray cat or dog gets to live."

My parents curled their toes uneasily as they sat stiffly on the couch.

In the muggy heat of high summer, both of them had sweated clean through their clothes.

I drew a deep breath and lifted my head toward the air conditioner.

"Hey, turn on the AC, please."

But the smart AC didn't respond at all.

I was about to call the AC company's help line when Philip came over with the dog.

He patted the dog on the head, and it tipped its face up and barked twice at the AC, and the thing actually switched on.

"A couple of days ago, Ms. Sullivan made me the administrator of the home's smart system."

"Mimi's sensitive to heat by nature, so I had no choice but to delete your voiceprint and put Mimi's in instead."

As he spoke, he opened the fridge, took out two bottles of mineral water, and poured a single glass for my parents.

The rest of the bottle, better than half of it, he emptied straight into the dog bowl beside him.

"Mimi only drinks this brand of mineral water. It's quite expensive, you know."