“This dance is for the one I’ve secretly loved all these ten years,” my husband announced at our wedding reception. He walked right past me and invited my sister to dance. The entire room erupted in applause.
But then I walked up to my father, who was sitting at the head table, and asked one loud question that made my husband choke and sent my sister to the emergency room. But before that moment – before that question was even uttered – there was the party. It was the biggest, loudest, most lavish celebration our city had ever seen.
The wedding hall at the Grand Magnolia Ballroom buzzed like a disturbed hive. Hundreds of guests, the entire business and social elite of our thriving midsize city, ate, drank, and laughed. The string orchestra played something light and non-intrusive.
Crystal chandeliers bathed everything in a warm golden glow, and servers glided silently between the tables, delivering champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Nia Hayes sat at the main table in the bride’s spot in her flawless white gown, feeling like an exhibit in a museum. She smiled, nodded, and accepted congratulations, but a dull, inexplicable dread was building inside her.
Her husband, Darius Vance, who had become her husband just three hours earlier, was magnificent. Tall, charming, in a designer tuxedo, he was the life of the party. He moved easily from table to table, shaking men’s hands, kissing the ladies’ cheeks, his infectious laugh echoing across the floor.
He was the ideal son-in-law for her father, Elijah Hayes. Ambitious, sharp, from a good though recently struggling family, he was the perfect husband for her – Nia, the reliable, serious elder daughter who had spent her entire life doing exactly what was expected of her. She looked at her father, Elijah Hayes – silver-haired and authoritative – sitting at the head of the table like a king on his throne.
He was pleased. Everything was going according to his plan. His business empire, built on food processing, was now cemented by this strategic corporate merger.
He occasionally cast approving glances at Nia, and those glances made her uneasy, as if she had just been successfully sold. Next to her father sat her younger sister, Simone – bright, capricious, and always the center of attention. Today she wore a tight wine-red dress that accentuated her figure.
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