The Bride Wore My Nightmares Chapter 13
Vanessa lost it. She snatched the mic away and jabbed a finger at them.
“If you hadn’t forced me back then, do you think I would have gone after Maddie? You forced me — all of you!”
“What did you just say?”
“You were the ringleader!”
The women were about to start tearing into each other right there on stage.
I took the other mic from Chloe and deliberately raised my voice: “Ladies, we can’t just go around accusing people at random. I trust Vanessa’s character. And I trust Ethan’s judgment!”
I raised the USB drive in my hand.
“This is what I went and personally pulled out a few days ago — the surveillance footage from our high school hallways and the locker room, all of it, capturing every single thing you did to me back then. Let’s watch it together, shall we? See who’s telling the truth. See who’s been lying from start to finish. If it turns out you’ve been wrongly accusing my future sister-in-law, well — you can wait for LAPD to come knocking!”
“You —” The color drained from every one of their faces. They probably hadn’t dreamed that Chloe and I would spend money bringing them to a proposal at the Beverly Wilshire just to sweep them all up at once.
Vanessa panicked, grabbed my arm, and lowered her voice to plead: “Maddie, please, let bygones be bygones. Let’s just focus on our lives now.”
“Cut the act. Back then, you were the worst of the bunch!”
“Yeah. From day one you couldn’t stand anyone doing better than you. And you forced us to jump in with you!”
The other girls whipped the guns around instantly and started biting into her.
“What are you people even talking about? I’m the one who was forced. It was you — you people forced me to go after Maddie with you!” Vanessa was no lightweight either. Her face was warped with rage, her makeup ruined, and she looked one second away from lunging at them.
Hearing Vanessa shove the blame off in a single sentence, the others exploded.
“You want to say that and not get struck by lightning? You’re the one who cornered Madison in the alley behind the school, sub-zero weather, and dumped ice water over her head! You’re the one who made her go back to class in her wet clothes!”
“And right before finals, you were terrified she’d get into a good college — you kept trying to talk her into going to community college with you. The moment she opened a book, you’d find some way to mess with her. You shredded her textbooks to pieces. You threw her notebooks in the trash — you’re going to sit there and say that wasn’t you?”
Vanessa only shook her head, mumbling the same thing over and over — “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”
I stood off to the side, watching them tear each other apart — nobody wanted to be dragged into this mess, and certainly nobody was letting Vanessa waltz out of the muck squeaky-clean.
“That’s enough. Play it,” I said quietly to Chloe.
Chloe nodded and tapped the space bar on her laptop.
The enormous LED screen behind the stage lit up.
Everyone in the ballroom expected footage of school hallways, the “surveillance” I’d claimed. Instead — Vanessa in the VIP booth of that West Hollywood lounge, wrapped around a total stranger, going at it all night.
“What is that?!”
“Oh my God, this is incredible!”
Aside from family and friends from both households, the ballroom was full of guests who’d come mainly to enjoy the spectacle — and the moment they saw what was on screen, phones came out to snap photos and record video.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!!” Vanessa completely lost it, screaming on stage like a madwoman.
The final image on the screen slowly appeared — a prenatal exam report from an OB-GYN clinic, the mother’s name printed clear as day: Vanessa Whitaker.
Ethan had gone stiff long before.
He pointed a shaking finger at the screen, his voice barely holding itself together. “What… what is all of this? Tell me. What is this?”
“Ethan, let me explain. You have to believe me, okay?” Vanessa sobbed, her makeup a ruin, still frantic to spin it. “Someone is setting me up. I’m innocent. Please believe me!”
Any other day, Ethan would probably have softened.
But this was hardly any other day.
That idiot brother of mine — no matter how thick he was — had to see it now.