Chapter 7 - The Guests Who ForgotBy sunrise, Bellefleur Manor had become the most expensive crime scene in three counties.
By noon, it had become a scandal.
By dinner, according to every headline on every phone in the hospital waiting room, I had become the unstable diabetic bridesmaid who ruined a Blackwood wedding.
That was Evelyn’s first move.
Not denial.
Narrative.
Her attorneys released a statement calling the incident “an unfortunate medical episode being exploited by overzealous federal agents.” Anonymous guests told society blogs I had been “emotional all afternoon.” A family friend claimed I had “a history of dramatic fainting.” Someone leaked a cropped photo of me lying beside the buffet with plates around me, making me look drunk instead of dying.
They did not leak the photo of Evelyn holding my pump over the trash.
They did not leak the video of her forcing the glass to my mouth.
They did not leak the vial.
People like Evelyn did not need truth. They only needed speed.
Grant texted me seventeen times before Sebastian had my phone secured as potential evidence.
I read none of them.
Chloe read one by accident when the screen lit up on the hospital tray.
Her face went pale.
“What?” I asked.
She did not answer.
“Chloe.”
She handed me the phone.
Grant: You need to fix this before Mom destroys you. Tell them you were confused and we can still get married privately.
For a moment, I stared at the message without understanding it.
We can still get married privately.
As if the problem was venue availability.
As if marriage to him remained a prize I might still earn if I behaved.
I handed the phone to Sebastian.
He read it once and placed it into an evidence sleeve.
“Threatening?” I asked.
“Useful,” he said.
Chloe paced beside my bed. She had borrowed hospital scrubs from a nurse after refusing to return to the manor for clothes. The sight should have been funny. My sister, who once cried because a bridesmaid dress was two shades too cool for her complexion, now wore oversized blue pants and no makeup.
But there was nothing funny in her eyes.
“They’re going to bury you,” she said.
“They’re trying.”
“No. You don’t understand how fast they move. Julian already called my phone twenty-six times. His aunt left a voicemail saying I misunderstood what I saw. His cousin texted me a number for a crisis publicist.”
“Did you call?”
She looked offended. “No.”
“Good.”
“But the guests.” She stopped pacing. “Sebastian, you said most of them looked away. That doesn’t mean nobody filmed it.”
Sebastian looked up.
Chloe’s expression sharpened with the first spark of strategic intelligence I had seen from her in years.
“Half the bridesmaids were recording everything for social media. Tessa was livestreaming behind the floral arch before the ceremony. The wedding content team had three videographers. The photographer had assistants. The DJ had cameras pointed at the dance floor. And Evelyn hired a behind-the-scenes luxury wedding filmmaker because she wanted a documentary cut.”
Sebastian stood very still.
“Names,” he said.
Chloe grabbed a notepad from my bedside table.
For the next twenty minutes, she wrote faster than I had ever seen. Names. Roles. Phone numbers. Instagram handles. Vendor companies. Where they had stood. Which angles they might have captured.
Every line felt like a match struck in darkness.
At the bottom of the second page, Chloe stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“There was also the flower girl.”
My stomach tightened.
“Lily?”
Chloe nodded.
Lily was Julian and Grant’s seven-year-old niece. Small, serious, always holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear. Evelyn adored displaying her in public, mostly because Lily was beautiful and silent enough to pose well.
“She was near the buffet,” Chloe said. “Her tablet was recording.”
Sebastian frowned. “A child was recording during the medical incident?”
“She records everything,” Chloe said. “She doesn’t talk much at family events. Evelyn says she’s shy. The tablet helps keep her quiet.”
Something about that sentence crawled under my skin.
Helps keep her quiet.
Sebastian noticed too.
“Where is Lily now?”
“With her parents, I think.”
“Who are her parents?”
“Julian’s sister, Marianne, and her husband, Paul.”
Sebastian made a call immediately.
When he hung up, his expression was grim.
“Marianne Blackwood left the manor with Lily before agents finished guest interviews.”
Chloe’s face drained.
“Can they do that?”
“They shouldn’t have been able to.”
“Where would they go?”
Chloe thought. “The family has a lake house in Vermont. A townhouse in Boston. Julian has an apartment in Manhattan. Evelyn has—”
She stopped.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“There’s a children’s therapy retreat in Maine funded by the Blackwood Foundation. Evelyn sends Lily there sometimes when Marianne is ‘overwhelmed.’”
My heart began to pound.
“Why would she send Lily away now?”
Chloe looked at me.
Neither of us needed Sebastian to answer.
Because Lily might have recorded everything.
Because Lily might have seen the vial.
Because in the Blackwood family, witnesses were either managed, silenced, or disappeared behind beautiful gates.
Sebastian turned toward the door.
“Stay here. Both of you.”
“Sebastian,” I said.
He paused.
“Find her.”
May you like
His face hardened.
“I will.”
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