She looked up at him.
“I’m sitting in the seat you assigned me.”
“You arrived in a Bentley with a billionaire and brought property records to my wedding.” His voice sharpened.
“Don’t pretend this isn’t some calculated performance.”
Annie’s expression remained calm.
“You sent the invitation.”
“To give you closure.”
“No,” Greg said quietly.
Julian turned.
Greg had moved away from the head table.
He looked sick.
“You said you wanted her to see what she missed,” he continued.
“You said she was a mouse.
You and your mother put her here because you thought it would be funny.”
Julian’s eyes hardened.
“This is not the time.”
“It became the time when you marched her past two hundred people to humiliate her.”
The guests nearest them were no longer pretending not to listen.
Several held phones at chest height.
Others watched Julian with the cold fascination reserved for a man whose mask had slipped in public.
At the ballroom entrance, Isabella Banks stood motionless in her wedding gown.
She had entered expecting the first dance.
Instead, she heard Greg’s confession.
Her veil framed a face that had gone completely still.
“Julian,” she said.
His posture changed the instant he saw her.
“Isabella, this is being twisted.”
“Did you invite your ex-wife here to embarrass her?”
“No.
I invited her because I wanted peace between us.”
Greg gave a small, disbelieving exhale.
Isabella looked at him.
“Tell me the truth.”
Greg glanced at Julian, then at Annie.
“They planned it,” he said.
“The table, the pillar, the kitchen doors.
His mother sent pictures from the seating rehearsal.
Julian called it poetic justice.”
Beatrice moved between Isabella and the crowd.
“This is a family matter.
Annie supported Julian when they were young and has spent years resenting what he became.
She came here to ruin your day.”
Annie reached into the folder and removed the original invitation.
She placed it on the table with the red number facing upward.
“I was in Seattle,” she said.
“Living my life.
That arrived in my mailbox.”
Isabella stared at the handwritten 19.
“Who wrote that?”
Beatrice said nothing.
The wedding planner did.
“Mrs.
Thorne asked me to move the table behind the pillar.
I objected because of the service traffic and the restroom corridor.
She insisted.”
Beatrice’s face flushed.
