Chapter 1 - Three Seconds
“I’ve loved him for eight years,” Camille said into the microphone.
My husband looked at her before he looked at me.
Three seconds.
That’s how long I stood there waiting for Reid to tell my best friend to stop.
We had been married for less than twenty minutes. Three hundred people were sitting beneath chandeliers in a Boston hotel ballroom, with champagne poured and dinner waiting behind the kitchen doors.
Camille was supposed to give a toast.
She had practiced it in my apartment the week before. Something about meeting me freshman year, watching me fall in love, knowing Reid would take care of me.
Apparently, she had rewritten it.
“I knew you before she did,” she told him. “I can’t keep pretending this doesn’t hurt.”
Someone near the front set down a glass too hard.
I looked at Reid.
He wasn’t confused. He wasn’t angry.
His eyes moved toward the microphone, then toward the tables where our families were sitting.
“Nora,” he said quietly. “Let me explain.”
Camille lowered the microphone.
“Explain what?” I asked.
“Can we go somewhere private?”
That was when my hands started shaking.
Until then, I had been waiting for this to become an embarrassing misunderstanding. Camille had drunk too much. Reid would reject her. Tomorrow, we would decide what to do about a friendship I’d had for eleven years.
But he hadn’t rejected her.
And she was watching him as though she already knew what he would say.
“How long?” I asked.
Reid stepped closer.
“Please don’t do this here.”
I remembered Camille helping fasten the tiny buttons down the back of my dress that morning.
You look perfect, she’d said.
Then she had asked whether Reid had brought “that paperwork” for me to sign.
I’d assumed she meant the marriage license.
Now I wasn’t sure.
I looked down at my bouquet. White roses. Camille had talked me out of peonies because, according to her, roses photographed better.
Even that small decision suddenly felt unbearable.
I walked toward her.
She reached for my hand.
“Please understand. I never wanted to hurt you.”
I put the bouquet in her arms.
“Then you should’ve told me before I bought the dress.”
Her fingers closed around the ribbon.
“If you want him,” I said, “keep him.”
“Nora—”
“Don’t.”
I turned toward the doors.
Behind me, a chair scraped. Someone said my name. I heard Reid tell the emcee to turn off the microphone.
I was halfway across the ballroom when he caught my wrist.
“Let go.”
“Listen to me.”
“Let go, Reid.”
He loosened his grip but stayed in front of me.
“You’re walking out in front of everybody.”
“Yes.”
“Think about what this is going to do.”
I looked at his hand, still hovering beside my arm.
For five years, I had watched him handle difficult clients, angry investors, employees who had made expensive mistakes. He always knew how to slow a conversation down until he controlled it.
Now he was using that voice on me.
“Were you sleeping with her?”
He glanced behind me.
That was enough.
I stepped around him.
“Nora, give me three days.”
“You had three seconds.”
He followed me into the hallway.
Then he said something that stopped me.
“Whatever you do, don’t call your father tonight.”
I turned.
“Why?”
“Because he’ll overreact.”
My father had helped finance Reid’s software company two years earlier. My family’s investment firm now owned a majority of it.
Reid was still the CEO. He liked calling Dad a silent partner.
Dad disliked the phrase but had let it pass because I was happy.
Or because I kept telling him I was.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” I asked.
“I’m worried about us.”
His phone vibrated. He glanced at it.
I left.
My mother caught up with me by the elevators, carrying the little evening bag I’d left at our table.
She didn’t tell me to calm down.
She pressed the button for our floor and stood beside me while I tried to breathe without making a sound.
In the bridal suite, she knelt and unbuckled my shoes.
That was when I cried.
Not loudly. I sat on the edge of the bed while she held my foot, and I couldn’t stop.
My phone kept lighting up.
Reid.
Camille.
Reid again.
Then a message from Dad.
Did you authorize a payment to CF Advisory yesterday?
I read it twice.
“No,” I said.
Mom looked up.
“What is it?”
Dad called before I could answer.
“Sweetheart, I need to ask you something. Reid sent our office a request yesterday. It’s scheduled for release Monday.”
“How much?”
“Four point eight million.”
I stood up.
“What for?”
“He described it as an acquisition deposit. The request includes your written approval.”
“I didn’t approve anything.”
A pause.
“Are you certain?”
“Dad, I would remember four point eight million dollars.”
“I’m sending you the attachment.”
The document appeared a moment later.
My name was typed beneath a signature that looked close enough to mine to frighten me.
But I hadn’t signed it.
I enlarged the page.
Then I saw the contact listed for the receiving company.
Camille Foster.
I sat back down.
“Stop the payment,” I said. “Please. Right now.”
“It’s on hold.”
“Send me everything he submitted.”
“I will. We’re meeting at eight tomorrow morning. You, me, your mother, and our attorney.”
Another message arrived.
Reid.
Camille shouldn’t have said anything tonight. But please don’t let your family get involved before we talk.
I took a screenshot.
Then I sent it to Dad.
His reply came almost immediately.
Ask him what else he used your signature for.
May you like
PART 2 continues in the first comment.
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