Raymond nodded once. “Are you certain?”
“I am certain that I will not pledge my life to a woman who views a wedding ring as a corporate acquisition.”
Raymond pulled out his phone. “I’ll notify the event coordinator immediately. We’ll issue a statement that the ceremony has been postponed due to a private family matter.”
“No,” Julian interrupted.
Raymond paused. “No?”
“I’m going to tell her myself.”
When Julian walked back into the bridal suite, Victoria was standing in front of a full-length mirror while her makeup artist touched up her lips. Resting on the four-poster bed was her custom bridal gown—an elaborate, ivory lace dress designed to impress two hundred high-society guests.
Victoria saw Julian and Raymond in the mirror’s reflection. Her brow furrowed. “Raymond? Why is your attorney in my dressing room?”
Julian looked at the makeup artist. “Please step outside.”
The woman quickly gathered her brushes and scurried out, pulling the door shut. The silence that filled the room was suffocating.
“I heard your phone call, Victoria,” Julian said cleanly.
Victoria didn’t blink. “Which phone call?”
“Don’t bother.”
She turned around slowly, crossing her arms. “Julian, you’re just having pre-wedding jitters. It’s completely normal—”
“I heard you talking about my company,” Julian cut in, his voice cutting through her excuses like a blade. “I heard you talking about the Lake Forest estate, my accounts, and my money. And I heard what you said about Leo.”
The color drained from Victoria’s face. It wasn’t the panic of an innocent person being accused; it was the sharp, ugly calculation of a grifter caught exposed.
“Were you spying on me?” she hissed.
Julian let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Of all the things I just said, that is what you choose to focus on?”
Victoria straightened her posture. “You’re taking things completely out of context.”
“Then give me the context.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Raymond stood quietly by the door, recording every detail on a legal notepad.
Victoria took a slow, deep breath, dropping her sweet facade completely. “You wanted this marriage just as much as I did, Julian. You wanted the attractive wife on your arm at corporate galas, the picture-perfect nursery for your social media, the whole suburban fantasy. Don’t act like a saint.”
“I wanted a real family,” Julian said softly.
“And I wanted financial security.”
The admission hung in the air, bare, shameless, and cruel.
Julian felt the final lingering ember of hope inside his chest quietly die.
“The wedding is off,” Raymond announced officially.
Victoria whipped her head toward the attorney. “You don’t make decisions for us!”
“No,” Julian said, stepping forward. “He doesn’t. I do.”
He pulled the platinum wedding band from his jacket pocket—the ring engraved with today’s date—and set it flat on the vanity table.
Victoria glared at it as if it were a physical threat. “You can’t do this to me! My entire family is downstairs!”
“I’m not doing this for them, Victoria.”
“You’re going to humiliate me!”
“No, Victoria. I’m simply taking you at your word.”
She clenched her jaw, her eyes flashing with venom. “Julian, stop being dramatic. We can discuss this reasonably after the reception.”
“After the reception was precisely when you planned on locking me into a joint trust,” Julian replied.
Victoria reached for her designer purse on the chair.
Then Julian asked the question that made his entire soul ache: “Is Leo my biological son?”
Victoria went completely rigid. The room seemed to lose all oxygen.
“Victoria,” Julian demanded, his voice breaking. “Answer me.”
She lowered her eyes to the floor. “I don’t know.”
The floor beneath Julian’s feet felt as though it had given way.
Three words. I don’t know. Three words that completely shattered eleven months of absolute certainty.
“You let me put my name on his birth certificate,” Julian whispered.
“You loved him!” she snapped back, looking up.
“I do love him!”
Victoria looked at him with an exhausting, shallow indifference. “Then keep loving him. What difference does a DNA test make?”
Julian stared at her in utter disbelief. “How can you be so utterly heartless?”
“I never wanted to be a mother the way you wanted to be a father,” she scoffed, waving her hand dismissively. “I wasn’t built to sit in a nursery changing diapers and singing nursery rhymes at three in the morning.”
“Being a parent isn’t about performing for an audience, Victoria.”
She merely shrugged.
That single, callous shoulder shrug told Julian everything he would ever need to know about the woman he had almost married.
Julian opened the suite door. “Leo stays with me until our legal teams sort this out.”
Victoria looked out into the hallway, where Teresa was holding the baby. Seeing Julian, Leo reached out with his tiny chubby hands, babbling happily. Victoria didn’t make a single move to hold her child.
“Do whatever you want,” Victoria said coldly, picking up her coat.
Her total indifference toward her own son was the final piece of clarity Julian needed before walking downstairs to face the crowd.
Part 3
The grand garden courtyard fell into complete, stunned silence when Julian walked out without his bride.
He didn’t make a grand entrance down the center aisle. He walked out from a side corridor, accompanied by Raymond, holding a sleeping Leo against his chest. The string quartet cut out mid-measure. The caterers froze. Victoria’s mother stood up abruptly from her front-row seat.
Eleanor Vance looked up at her son from the front row, reading his shattered expression instantly.
