My Sister Got Pregnant by My Fiancé, but Mom Still Demanded I Walk Down the Aisle—Until I Exposed the $6,400 She Secretly Took from My Wedding Fund to Protect Them...

"Eleanor," Arthur whispered.

The sound of his voice was worse than a scream. It was hollow, cracked, stripped of every ounce of affection that had held their thirty-year marriage together.

Eleanor was clutching the edge of the tablecloth with both hands, her knuckles bone-white. "Arthur... Arthur, please, listen to me. I did it for the family. I did it for the company! If Richard found out, the merger would have died! I was protecting Sloane! I was protecting all of us!"

"You stole from our daughter," Arthur said. He stood up slowly. He didn't clutch his chest. He didn't collapse. Instead, a terrifying, icy stillness settled over him. "You took Brooke's savings to cover up an affair between her sister and her fiancé?"

"Arthur, think about our position!" Eleanor shrieked, dropping all pretense of elegance. Her makeup looked suddenly melted, her face contorted into an ugly, desperate mask. "Do you know what this will do to us? Look around this room! Everyone is watching! You're letting her destroy us in front of the entire city!"

"You destroyed us, Eleanor," Arthur said.

He looked across the table at Reid.

Reid was shaking, his face buried in his hands, slouched down as if trying to disappear beneath the linen.

"Get up," Arthur said.

Reid didn't move.

"I said get up, you miserable coward!" Arthur barked, his voice carrying the authority of a military veteran and an executive who had spent his life commanding respect.

Reid slowly lifted his head, his face slick with tears and snot. "Arthur... Mr. Vance... I'm sorry. I swear to you, I'm so sorry—"

"Richard," Arthur said, turning his cold gaze onto Reid’s father. "The joint venture is dead. Pull your equipment from my docks by sunrise tomorrow morning, or I will have the port authority impound every container bearing your company’s logo."

Richard Montgomery’s face was purple with fury. He looked at his son with utter disgust. "You idiot," Richard spat, not at Arthur, but at Reid. "You absolute, worthless idiot."

Richard grabbed his wife’s wrist. "Helen. We're leaving."

"Richard, wait!" Eleanor pleaded, scrambling around the head table, reaching for Richard’s sleeve. "We can renegotiate! Brooke is just emotional! We can still salvage this!"

"Get your hands off my suit, Eleanor," Richard said coldly, jerking his arm away as if she carried the plague. "Your family is radioactive."

The Montgomerys walked out of the ballroom, their footsteps echoing sharply across the silent room. One by one, the guests at the surrounding tables began standing up, avoiding eye contact, whispering furiously behind napkins and clutches as they made a beeline for the exits.

Within five minutes, the ballroom was empty.