The Wedding Was A Game And Her Father Was The Prize Chapter 09
The day Nolan left Munich, a fine rain was falling.
On the flight back to Boston, he barely slept for the entire dozen hours.
Because Henry didn’t hate him.
Claire didn’t hate him either.
They had simply erased him from their lives.
That kind of indifference hurt more than any hatred could have.
The moment he landed in Boston, he went straight to the precinct.
Bianca had been released on bail pending trial.
The instant she saw him, she threw herself at him.
“Nolan! You finally came!”
“Please help me, please. I can’t go to prison. My parents are losing their minds.”
Nolan looked down at her.
There had been a time when this act of hers had worked on him every single time.
But watching her cry now, all he felt was a cold, sick disgust.
She read his silence as leverage.
“So Nolan honey, you’ll help me, right?”
He drew his hand out of hers, slowly.
“I’m not going to help you.”
“I’m giving the police everything I know.”
“Every single ‘bet’ you ran, going all the way back to college.”
“Including my part in it.”
He turned and walked away.
Behind him, her voice tore into a scream.
“Nolan Ashford! You think doing this is going to make Claire Sutton forgive you?”
“She’s never coming back!”
“She was done with you the second she got on that plane!”
His footsteps slowed for a moment.
He knew.
He knew better than anyone that Claire wasn’t coming back.
In the weeks that followed, Nolan cut off every one of the old college friends.
He sat down and put together, one file at a time, every text thread, every video, every voice memo that touched Claire, and delivered it all to his attorneys and to the police.
The people who had laughed at her in the group chat didn’t take it seriously at first.
Not until the cease-and-desist letters started landing in their mailboxes.
Not until their employers, their families, and their alumni networks all found out that they had participated in bullying.
Then they panicked.
Some of them tried to get Nolan to broker an apology to Claire on their behalf.
Others filmed public apology videos and posted them to Instagram, hoping she’d see.
But it was all too late.
Claire didn’t need any of it.
Over at the Whitmore house, everything came apart.
Mr. Whitmore called in every favor he had, trying to protect his daughter. He even tried to destroy the bakery’s order records.
The deeper they dug, the more they turned up.
Whitmore Capital had been running with holes in its books for years, and the evidence linking Mr. Whitmore to securities fraud and money laundering surfaced piece by piece.
The SEC opened an inquiry.
Banks pulled their lines of credit. Partners walked away from deals. Projects stalled out one after another.
In less than three months, Whitmore Capital’s cash flow collapsed, and the firm filed for bankruptcy.
The FBI took Mr. Whitmore in.
Mrs. Whitmore sold off her jewelry and their properties and still couldn’t cover the legal fees.
The Ivy League friends who used to circle Bianca disappeared, one by one.
She had built her identity on using “bets” to grind other people’s dignity into the ground.
Now she was the punchline every one of those people whispered about.
Bianca was eventually convicted on the assault charges and sent to prison.
Mr. Whitmore was sentenced on federal fraud and given a long term.
The day Nolan took the stand, reporters caught him on his way out.
They asked if he regretted the way he had treated the woman he was supposed to marry.
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said one thing.
“I regret everything.”
But off camera, no one cared about his regret.
Claire wouldn’t hear about it.
And even if she did, it wouldn’t matter to her.
The Ashfords caught the shockwave from the scandal too.
Investors pulled out. Projects went on hold. Nolan barely slept.
Six months later, the Munich Young Designer Award announced its winners.
Nolan saw the news alert late at night.
The gowns in the photo were done in warm ivory and misty gold, the skirts opening in layer after layer, like butterfly wings lit up by the sun.
The designer credited beneath them: Claire Sutton.
In the interview video, she wore her long hair swept up, and she spoke in fluent English with an easy, animated confidence.
Nolan’s eyes went red, slowly.
The Claire in the frame was laughing. Free. Radiant.
She had really made it out.
And he would be left inside that absurd little game they had played, forever.