Chapter 3 - The Disowned Daughter’s Retaliation
The word echoed off the high vaulted ceilings like a physical strike.
"Wife?"
Eleanor Vance shrieked, dropping her crystal champagne glass directly onto the floorboards.
The glass shattered into a hundred fragments, spraying dry sparkling wine over Fiona’s white satin train.
Fiona jumped to her feet, her veil tilting sideways on her heavily lacquered hair.
"That’s impossible!" Fiona screamed, forgetting her polished, demure bridal demeanor.
"Mabel works as an anonymous data clerk in a supply office! She lives in an apartment with no doorman!"
She pointed an accusatory, manicured finger at me.
"Christian Montgomery wouldn't look at her in a dark room! This is a paid actor! She hired an impersonator to ruin my reception!"
Julian Sterling turned ghostly white, grabbing his new bride’s arm and violently pulling her hand down.
"Shut your mouth, Fiona!" Julian hissed through gritted teeth, his knees trembling.
Julian had sat in two shareholder meetings where Christian Montgomery systematically destroyed a competing bank in twenty minutes.
He knew the scar near Christian’s left eyebrow.
He knew the monogrammed silver serpent cufflinks.
This was not an actor.
This was the absolute apex predator of the global financial sector.
Aidan Vance dropped the microphone.
It hit the wooden floor with a deafening thump that made several elderly women in the front row flinch.
"Your... your wife?" Aidan stammered, the alcohol draining from his system in a flash of cold terror.
"Mr. Montgomery, please... there has been a dreadful, unforgivable misunderstanding."
He took three stumbling steps toward our table, his hands raised in desperate supplication.
"Mabel is my daughter! We were just teasing her! A little family humor to liven up the evening!"
"Humor?" Christian asked, his voice dead and emotionless.
"Pouring cheap wine over a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar custom Parisian gown is humor?"
The ballroom erupted into a chorus of sharp gasps.
Tiffany, who had mocked my 'polyester blend' five minutes earlier, shrank back against her table, her face turning pale green.
"Publicly declaring my wife to be a worthless spinster before the entire city of Boston is humor?" Christian continued, stepping forward.
The sheer aura of his presence forced Aidan to take two clumsy steps backward.
"I came here tonight to pick up my wife and quietly let you enjoy your daughter's nuptials," Christian said coldly.
"I intended to ignore the fact that you stole her mother's trust fund to pay for this absurd circus."
Eleanor’s face drained of color at the mention of the trust fund.
"I intended to overlook the fact that you assigned her to a corner table beside the garbage bins."
"Christian, please," Aidan begged, his voice cracking with pathetic desperation.
"We didn't know! If Mabel had simply told us she was seeing a man of your stature—"
"She doesn't owe you an explanation for her happiness," I interrupted, stepping out slightly from under Christian’s arm.
I looked at Aidan, then at Eleanor, and finally at Fiona, whose eyes were filled with venom and fear.
"For twenty years, you treated me like an unwanted stray in your house," I said, my voice ringing clear and steady.
"When my biological mother died, you hid her will."
"You took the three million dollars she left for my education and spent it on Fiona’s private equestrian lessons."
Whispers broke out among the Boston elite sitting at the surrounding tables.
These were families who obsessed over pedigree, honor, and financial transparency.
To publicly reveal that Aidan Vance embezzled an orphan's inheritance to fund his second daughter was social suicide.
"You told everyone I was clumsy, untalented, and unlovable," I continued, feeling the heavy cashmere of Christian’s jacket against my back.
"You made sure I sat in the dirt so Fiona could shine."
"Mabel, stop this nonsense!" Eleanor cried out, her voice shrill with rising panic.
"We raised you! We fed you! How dare you slander your family on your sister’s wedding night!"
"I am not slandering you, Eleanor," I replied with a chilling smile.
"I am simply reading the ledger."
Christian pulled a sleek black leather phone from his inner pocket and tapped the screen twice.
"Mark," Christian spoke into the speakerphone, not taking his eyes off Aidan Vance.
"Begin the foreclosure proceedings on Vance Maritime Logistics."
Aidan’s breath hitched in his throat as if he had been punched in the solar plexus.
"No... no, no, Christian! You can't do that! Montgomery Global holds our private debt notes, but the payment isn't due until next Friday!"
"Check your contractual covenants, Aidan," Christian said with absolute finality.
"Clause 14B: Any public defamation of the Montgomery name or its immediate family members constitutes an immediate, uncurable default."
Christian tucked his phone back into his coat pocket.
May you like
"As of three minutes ago, your company belongs to Montgomery Global."
"And as of tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, the marshals will seize your Beacon Hill brownstone."
