Chapter 4 - The Rehearsal Dinner
Four hours later, the dining room of my parents' house was filled with forty guests.
Relatives from Washington and California clinked crystal champagne glasses, laughing and celebrating under the white lights strung through the maple trees. Inside, the long mahogany table was laden with roasted meats, silver chafing dishes, and fine china.
I sat at the head of the table in my engagement dress, flanked by my father on my left and Ethan on my right.
Ethan’s hand rested casually on the back of my chair, his fingers brushing against my spine in a silent, agonizing reminder of the threat hanging over my family. Across the table, Margaret sat sipping red wine, smiling graciously at my mother as if she weren't keeping a human being chained in a concrete shed twenty miles away.
“To Claire and Ethan!” my father raised his glass, his face glowing with pride. “May your marriage be long, prosperous, and filled with all the blessings this world has to offer.”
“Hear, hear!” the table chorused.
Everyone drank. Everyone smiled.
Except me.
I looked down at my plate, my stomach churning with acid and terror. I had spent the last four hours trying to figure out a way to warn my parents, but every time I looked at Dad, I remembered Ethan holding the commercial deeds to our hardware stores. If I spoke out without absolute proof, Ethan would destroy us legally before the police could even secure a search warrant for his mother’s estate.
“Claire, darling,” Margaret said sweetly from across the table, leaning forward. “You’ve hardly touched your food. Are you feeling well enough for the ceremony tomorrow?”
Every eye at the table turned toward me.
Ethan’s hand tightened slightly on the back of my chair.
I looked up, met Margaret’s cold, predatory gaze, and slowly placed my fork down on the porcelain plate.
“No, Margaret,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the murmur of the dining room. “I’m not feeling well at all.”
My father frowned. “Claire, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not well,” I repeated, standing up slowly from the table, “because I finally realized why I couldn’t eat, why I couldn’t breathe, and why I canceled the wedding in my heart the moment I walked into your backyard this afternoon, Ethan.”
Ethan’s smile vanished. He stood up beside me. “Claire, sit down. You’re having a panic attack.”
“Don’t touch me!” I shouted, stepping away from the table so that every relative, aunt, uncle, and wedding guest turned to stare in stunned silence.
My mother dropped her napkin. “Claire, stop it! What is happening to you?”
“Ask him,” I pointed a shaking finger directly at Ethan. “Ask your beloved future son-in-law where his first wife is. Ask him about Sarah Miller, who is currently chained to a bed in Margaret’s backyard cottage because she found out she was married to a monster!”
The dining room went dead silent. A cousin from Seattle choked back a gasp.
Ethan’s face went chalk-white, but he recovered instantly, forcing a pained, sympathetic laugh. “She’s hallucinating. The stress of the wedding has caused a complete psychological break. Mom, we need to take her to the hospital—”
“I am not hallucinating!” I yelled, reaching into the pocket of my blazer—where I had managed to slip a spare flash drive I found in Margaret’s study while she was distracted.
I slammed the flash drive down onto the center of the dining table, right into the bowl of gravy where Dad’s $38,000 check had vanished hours earlier.
“That drive contains copies of the security footage from the cottage, Sarah’s medical records, the six previous marriage certificates of women who vanished from Seattle and Portland under mysterious circumstances, and the financial extortion files Ethan uses to silence anyone who gets too close!”
Ethan lunged across the table toward the flash drive, but my father—recovering his protective instincts with blinding speed—grabbed a heavy silver gravy boat and slammed it down onto the edge of the table, blocking Ethan’s path.
“Step back, Ethan,” Dad growled, his face turning dark with fury. “Don't touch my daughter.”
Before Ethan could react, the front doors of our house burst open.
May you like
Four federal marshals and two local detectives in tactical gear flooded the hallway, their badges raised high in the air.
“Ethan Cole and Margaret Cole!” the lead detective announced, drawing his service weapon as he stepped into the dining room. “You are under arrest for kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, interstate financial fraud, and suspected abduction across multiple state lines!”
