The nerve of that man!
The Whitfield family had been illustrious once, generations ago. By now, the name was nothing but gilded rot, a hollow shell dressed up in old glory. If it hadn't been for the childhood betrothal tying them to the Pruitts, if not for the Pruitt family's financial lifeline, the Whitfield name would have vanished from Kingsharbor's elite circles long ago.
And yet Desmond still had the audacity to want it all. Both women. Both fortunes.
What a joke.
My father laughed, the kind of laugh that came from pure, white-hot fury. "The Whitfields have enjoyed a few good years and already forgotten who pulled them out of the gutter?"
Margaret Whitfield hurried forward through the crowd, her expression tight with forced composure.
"Now, now, let's not say things we don't mean," she said, her tone practiced and diplomatic. "There's so much to manage with a wedding. Desmond has been running himself ragged for weeks. He simply lost his head for a moment."
She spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "It's all a misunderstanding. We'll sort it out."
Our family had always been cautious when it came to marriage. A full month before the wedding, my parents had hired a private investigator to look into Desmond.
The night before the ceremony, the investigator delivered a stack of photographs. Desmond and Catherine. Together. Intimately.
I had been shocked. Furious. But more than anything, I couldn't believe it.
Then I stumbled across that viral post online.
The fog lifted. Desmond wasn't just cheating. He was planning to ride the Pruitt fortune to the top, and once he'd squeezed every last drop of value from us, he'd engineer our family's ruin.
I would never let that happen.
My mother let out a sharp, derisive laugh. "Mrs. Whitfield, do you take us for fools?"
"Amber has lived under the same roof as your son since she was ten years old. They've known each other for over a decade. You're telling me he was too tired to recognize his own bride?"
Catherine scrambled to throw on a robe and dropped to her knees in front of everyone, tears streaming down her face like rain on white petals.
"Mom, this is all my fault," she sobbed. "Amber overslept, and I was terrified our family would be humiliated, so I put on the wedding dress myself. I was only trying to help."
She turned to look at me, her voice cracking with every word.
"Amber, please. I was wrong. But it's done now. I've already married Desmond. If you keep making a scene, you'll only drag the Pruitt name through the mud. Even if you don't care about me, don't you care about the family that raised you?"
Her eyes were rimmed red, her expression the picture of wounded innocence, as if she were the one who'd been wronged. As if the filthy affair with her sister's fiance had nothing to do with her.
And somehow, I was the one threatening the family's reputation by demanding justice.
That was when the private investigator I'd already contacted arrived. He walked straight to my father and handed him a stack of photographs.
"Mr. Pruitt, I'm afraid this situation is more complicated than it appears."
My father opened the envelope. Inside were the same explicit photos I'd already seen.
Every single image showed them in some degrading position, shameless and brazen, without a shred of decency between them.
My father's face turned a deep, mottled red. He slammed the photographs down onto the bed.
"What does the Whitfield family have to say for itself now?"
"Mrs. Whitfield, if your son wanted the Pruitt family's adopted daughter, he could have said so outright. There was no need to humiliate my daughter on her wedding day!"
"The partnership is over. The Pruitts are pulling every cent out of Whitfield Corp."
The moment those words left his mouth, the color drained from Margaret's face.
Without Pruitt capital, Whitfield Corp's finances would collapse entirely. Nothing would be left but a mountain of debt.
Margaret whipped around and slapped Desmond hard across the face. "Look at what you've done!"
Then she jabbed a finger at Catherine. "Someone get this tramp out of my sight! Throw her out!"
Desmond pressed a hand to his stinging cheek. His gaze cut toward me, vicious and seething, as though he wanted to tear me apart.
In his eyes, I wasn't the victim. I was the villain who'd ruined his wedding and turned his mother against him.
He pulled Catherine behind his back and squared his jaw, staring his mother down with open defiance.
