My husband was walking down the aisle to marry another woman—and she had invited me to watch.

Marcus didn't reach for the phone. He didn't blink.

"Keep your hand out of your pocket, Mr. Vance," Marcus said, his service weapon remaining level. "I answer to the Deputy Director of Federal Security, not a state-level political appointee with a golf membership at your club."

Arthur Vance’s smile hardened, the smooth patrician mask cracking just enough to reveal the predatory arrogance underneath. "You boys always think the badge makes you immune to gravity. Gravity always wins, Cole."

From behind Arthur, a sudden, ragged voice broke the tension.

"Daddy?"

We all looked.

Giselle had walked onto the dock. She had stepped out of her ruined wedding gown entirely, wearing only a black silk slip and Christian’s discarded dinner jacket wrapped around her shoulders. Her bare feet were dirty from the grass, but her eyes were completely clear for the first time since that morning.

The hysterical, vanity-obsessed socialite had vanished. In her place stood a woman who had just realized she had been used as human meat by two men she trusted.

"Giselle, sweetheart," Arthur said, his voice instantly softening into that condescending, paternal tone men like him use to pacify women they consider decor. "Go back to the house. The lawyers are handling this. You don't need to see the ugly side of business."

"Did you know?" she asked.

Her voice didn't shake. It was razor-sharp.

Arthur frowned. "Did I know what?"

"Did you know he was still married to Camille?"

Arthur let out an exasperated sigh, waving his scotch glass dismissively. "Giselle, don't be naive. Christian Dupont was a corporate vehicle. A conduit for the Biscayne port concession. Whether he was married to a schoolteacher, a nun, or your cousin Camille was completely irrelevant to the underlying capital structure. I was protecting our family's liquidity."

"You sold me," Giselle whispered.

"I secured your future!" Arthur barked, his patience finally snapping. "Do you think forty-million-dollar trust disbursements grow on trees? You wanted the Palm Beach estate. You wanted the Dupont society name. You wanted the wedding of the season! I gave you what you wanted while securing our foreign partners' positions!"

"Foreign partners," Giselle repeated. She turned her head slowly, looking at me.

Our eyes met across the dock.

Twelve years of high school pettiness, passive-aggressive text messages, social comparisons, and competitive bitterness seemed to burn away in the humid sea wind, leaving behind only the stark, undeniable truth: we had both been selected by the same predators for the exact same purpose—Camille for her clearance and cover, Giselle for her name and family trust.

"Camille," Giselle said, stepping past her father as if he were nothing more than a piece of driftwood.

"Giselle, stay where you are!" Arthur commanded.

She ignored him completely. She walked straight up to where Christian lay on the dock, stopped, and looked down at him.

"Give her the watch, Christian," Giselle said.

Christian flinched, clutching his wrist against his chest. "Giselle, please—if they take the drive, Vance will destroy DuPont Crest! There will be nothing left!"

"Give her the watch," she repeated, her voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute hatred that was terrifyingly familiar. It was the Vance family voice—the one Arthur used to destroy competitors, the one her grandfather had used to carve out empires. But now, it was turned directly inward.

Christian looked at me, then at Marcus's unyielding gun, and finally at the bride he had deceived.

With trembling fingers, he unbuckled the leather strap of the vintage chronograph.

I took it from his hand. The weight of the steel felt heavy, cold, and entirely devoid of the sentiment I had poured into it four years ago. It was no longer a symbol of love; it was Exhibit A.

"You're making a catastrophic mistake, young lady," Arthur Vance said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "If those accounts are exposed, the Vance trust will be frozen by the Department of Justice. Your credit cards, your penthouses, your allowances—everything goes into a federal receivership."

Giselle turned to her father, her chin held high, her chin trembling slightly but her eyes fierce.

"I grew up in those houses, Dad," she said. "I know where you keep the second set of accounting keys. The ones you didn't give Christian. The ones kept in the safe behind the maritime paintings in the library at the Palm Beach club."

Arthur Vance went completely, horrifyingly pale. The scotch glass slipped from his fingers, shattering against the wooden dock, amber liquid and ice splashing over his leather loafers.

"You wouldn't dare," Arthur breathed.

"Try me," Giselle said.

She turned back to me, her breath steadying. "Agent Vance-Dupont. Camille. If I give you the encryption codes for my father's offshore clearing ledgers, will you guarantee that this coward spends twenty years in a federal penitentiary?"

She pointed a blood-red fingernail at Christian.

I slipped the green-faced watch into my blazer pocket and zipped it shut.

"I'll guarantee he spends twenty-five," I replied.