Chapter 4: The Bride Who Wouldn't Wait
He held the phone out toward me like a question.
"Answer it," I said.
He did.
He put it on speaker without me asking.
"Grant." Sienna's voice was controlled but thin at the edges.
"Where are you?
The guests are still here.
The photographer is asking if we're continuing.
People are saying you left because of Claire — I need you to come back and tell me what is happening."
"I'm at the hospital," he said.
A pause.
"Is she sick?"
"No."
"Then why are you—"
"Sienna." His voice was quiet.
Quieter than I had ever heard it.
"Did you contact my estate attorney?"
The pause this time was longer.
"We talked about updating your estate documents before the wedding.
That's normal.
That's responsible planning, Grant, I don't understand why—"
"Did you ask him to redraft my parents' trust?"
"I asked him to look at the overall structure.
You said yourself the documents were outdated—"
"Did you ask him to name you sole beneficiary?"
Nothing.
"Sienna."
"I was going to be your wife," she said.
"That's what wives do.
They protect the family's future.
I was protecting—"
"Stop." The word came out flat.
"I have the email chain."
Another silence.
When she spoke again, her voice had changed.
The careful warmth was gone.
"You have been in that room with Claire for less than an hour," she said, "and she has already turned you against me.
That is exactly what I warned you about.
That is exactly the behavior I documented.
She is manipulative, Grant.
She is doing it right now."
"She didn't show me the emails," he said.
"My estate attorney called her attorney this morning."
"Then her attorney went looking for something to use.
They've been building a case against me since the divorce.
Can't you see that?
She lost you and she has spent every day since then trying to take you back."
I kept my eyes on my daughter.
"The transfers, Sienna," Grant said.
"From my personal account.
Eleven of them.
Explain those."
"You authorized those payments."
"I authorized payments to a communications consultant.
Not to you personally."
"I was the consultant.
I was doing work for you.
Real work.
I was protecting your reputation during a very difficult—"
"The fabricated messages," he said.
"The ones you sent me.
The ones you told me Claire wrote."
The line went quiet for three full seconds.
"I don't know what she showed you," Sienna said, "but whatever it is, she created it.
She is trying to destroy us on our wedding day and you are standing in her hospital room letting her."
"I'm looking at a lab report," he said.
"I'm looking at a paternity result.
I'm looking at eleven bank transfers and a will that would have given you control of my family's trust the moment we signed the marriage certificate."
"Grant—"
"My daughter is two hours old," he said.
"I missed it.
I missed all of it because you made me believe her silence was guilt."
"She kept the pregnancy from you—"
"Because you made sure I wouldn't listen." His voice didn't rise.
It just went harder.
"You knew.
Didn't you.
You knew she was pregnant."
The silence that followed was the longest yet.
"I want a lawyer," Sienna said.
Grant ended the call.
He set the phone face-down on the chair.
He looked at the window.
The rain had stopped.
The glass was streaked and grey.
"She knew," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"My attorney believes she intercepted a message from my doctor," I said.
"Sent to your shared email account.
From before you changed the passwords."
He turned to look at me.
"She deleted it."
"Yes."
He sat with that for a moment.
Then he looked at his daughter again.
She had woken slightly, her eyes unfocused and dark, moving toward the light from the window.
"What's her name?" he said.
I had been waiting for that question for two hours.
"I haven't decided yet," I said.
"I was waiting."
He looked at me.
Something moved across his face that I didn't have a name for.
His phone lit up on the chair.
Not a call this time.
A news alert.
He turned it over and read the screen.
He handed it to me without a word.
May you like
The headline read: *Kingsley Wedding Abandoned — Sources Cite Fraud Investigation.*
Sienna's name was in the second line.
