Chapter 3 - FORENSIC DREAMS
By midnight, June was tucked into the daybed in my home office, fast asleep after a mug of chamomile tea and two extra-strength Tylenol.
In the kitchen, Bellamy, Sarah Klein, and I sat around the island, surrounded by hard drives, printouts, and the three painted pieces of barbed wire sealing inside a clear plastic evidence bag from the hospital.
Sarah had plugged June’s phone into her laptop, extracting the twenty-second video file June had recorded in the bridal suite.
The video was crystal clear.
It showed Marin, Delaney's maid of honor, sitting at a vanity table. In her right hand were heavy-duty wire cutters. On the glass table sat a silver bridal tiara. Marin was carefully crimping three-inch segments of rusted, silver-painted barbed wire into the interior metal combs—the exact parts designed to dig into a woman's hair to keep the crown stable.
Delaney’s voice echoed off-camera in the recording: "Make sure they're sharp, Marin. She needs to learn that she doesn't control this family anymore."
Bellamy let out a low whistle. "That's not just assault, Sarah. That's premeditated criminal battery with a weapon."
"It gets worse," Sarah said, tapping her keyboard and pulling up a financial spreadsheet. "While you two were getting June, my forensic accountant finished the preliminary audit on the Ward Family Living Trust."
She turned the laptop screen toward me.
"When your sister Clara died five years ago, her life insurance policy paid out $2.5 million into a restricted minor trust for June, with your father listed as trustee and Delaney listed as the secondary manager."
"How much is left?" I asked, my stomach knotting.
"Fourteen thousand dollars," Sarah said cleanly.
I stared at the screen. "Fourteen thousand? Where did two point four million dollars go?!"
Sarah clicked a tab. "Eight hundred thousand transferred to 'Delaney Ward Media LLC' for 'brand management and media coaching for the minor.' Six hundred thousand went into funding Delaney's docuseries Healing Through Family. Four hundred thousand went toward the down payment on Delaney's house in Westchester. And the rest was cleared out last month to pay for the wedding at the conservatory."
I covered my mouth with my hand. They hadn't just used June for content—they had systematically liquidated her orphaned inheritance to finance Delaney's influencer lifestyle.
"They needed you to sign that NDA, Sloan," Sarah explained, pointing at the document my mother had brought over earlier. "Because the NDA contained a clause that ratified all previous trust distributions. If you had signed it, you would have legally released Delaney and your parents from liability for stealing June's money."
"They tried to blind me with a seventy-five thousand dollar settlement so I wouldn't notice they stole two million from an orphan," I said, my voice shaking with a terrifying, icy calm.
"So what's the play?" Bellamy asked, leaning forward. "Do we call the police?"
"No," Sarah said, a dark smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Not yet. If we go to the police now, Delaney’s lawyers will file injunctions, tie it up in court for years, and drain what little money is left. We use the one thing Delaney cares about more than money."
"Her audience," I said.
"Her brand," Sarah corrected. "Tomorrow at noon, Delaney is holding a live-streamed 'Wedding Q&A and Family Reconciliation' on her YouTube channel. She's going to tell two million people how her bitter sister attacked her at the altar."
May you like
I looked at the plastic evidence bag holding the barbed wire, then at June’s video playing on the laptop loop.
"Then at twelve-fifteen," I said, "we give them the real story."
