Chapter 3

Then, before I could react, Julian slapped me across the face, his voice cold.

"Enough! Katie, you've gone too far.

"I told you, Debs was joking. She's basically our little sister, and we're getting married tomorrow.

"What are you even so jealous about? Why are you making a scene?"

His outburst was loud enough to stop a man just stepping out of his car. It was Officer Daniel Grey. He looked at us, his expression flat and unreadable.

"Are you two having a lovers' spat and filing a false report?"

Debbie's eyes lit up, and she quickly played the wounded party.

"That's right, officer. It's all my fault; I'm the petty one throwing a tantrum. I'm so sorry to trouble you.

"Julian's been standing here trying to talk sense into her this whole time. She just won't listen, and now she's even threatening to report a false crime and get me thrown in jail.

"Please, officer, just go. I'm so sorry for all this trouble today."

Officer Grey seemed to accept Debbie's story, and hearing Julian mention the wedding was tomorrow, he didn't want to be the one to ruin someone's happy occasion.

He was just about to give a verbal warning about the dangers of filing a false report and turn to leave when I lifted my face, the right side still swollen from the slap, and spoke to him, calm and steady.

"Hello, officer. I'm the one who called this in, and it wasn't a false report. I want to report Debbie Bloom for malicious extortion, and Julian Sussman for assault and intentional destruction of my property."

Officer Grey's eyes went to the handprint on my face, and he startled.

That wasn't a light slap. It didn't look like something from a couple getting married tomorrow.

Debbie kept trying to steer the conversation, wiping at fake tears as she grabbed my hand.

"Katie, please, I'm begging you, stop this.

"You're both getting married tomorrow. If you go to the station over some silly fight tonight, isn't that just bad luck for the wedding?"

As she spoke, she shot Julian a look, silently telling him to back her up.

Julian caught on immediately. He pulled up our wedding photos and the digital invitation on his phone, doing everything he could to prove our relationship was real.

"Yes, yes, officer, we really are getting married tomorrow. She's just upset with me. I'm sorry for all this trouble."

I grabbed his phone out of his hand with a cold smile and zoomed in on the wedding photo, holding it up for Officer Grey to see.

He frowned almost instantly. Something was off. Our faces looked pasted onto the photo, and the editing was sloppy.

"This wedding photo... doesn't look right, does it?"

That was when Julian remembered. Our wedding photos hadn't actually been taken by a real photographer. They were AI-generated.

That had been Debbie's fifth test of whether my feelings were real.

That day, Julian had shown up at my rented apartment with a devastated look on his face. He told me the Sussman family had gone bankrupt, that his mother had suffered such a shock she'd been hospitalized, and that he was now saddled with debts and had nothing left. He asked if I still wanted to marry him.

I'd stayed completely calm and told him, right away, that the priority wasn't the wedding, it was figuring out a plan for paying off his debt.

Hearing that, Julian had looked down, disappointed, clearly thinking I was exactly the kind of woman Debbie always accused me of being, someone who cared more about money than about him.

Then he watched me pull out every bank card I owned and pull up my payment apps to add up what I had left, muttering the whole time about how the apartment I was renting was too big, that switching to something smaller would save money.

In the end, I'd worked out that I could get my hands on one hundred thousand dollars right away.