CHAPTER 2: AFTERMATH

For one full second, nobody moved.

The string quartet's last note was still hanging in the air, ridiculous and cheerful against the sound of Camille's heels hammering down the hallway inside the hotel. Then Camille's father swore under his breath and took off after her, and the whole rooftop broke apart at once, guests standing up from their chairs, Sable barking something into her earpiece, one of the photographers instinctively raising his camera before catching himself and lowering it again like he'd remembered where he was.

Temi didn't think. She just moved, hiking the hem of her dress up past her knees and running after her best friend in heels that were never built for running, past startled guests, past a waiter frozen mid stride with a tray of champagne flutes, through the propped open doors and into the cool, dim hallway beyond.

"Camille!"

No answer. Just the fading echo of footsteps somewhere ahead, and a stairwell door swinging shut on its hinge with a soft, final click.

Temi hit the stairwell door and shoved through it, breathless, one shoe already threatening to give out on her. "Cam, wait!"

She caught a glimpse of champagne colored silk disappearing around the landing two floors down, and then nothing. By the time Temi made it to the ground floor, chest heaving, the hotel lobby was just a hotel lobby again, calm and gleaming and utterly indifferent to the fact that somewhere inside it, a bride had just run from her own wedding rehearsal.

She checked the ladies' room. Empty. She checked the small side lounge where they'd done hair and makeup earlier that afternoon. Empty, except for an abandoned curling iron still faintly warm and a half finished glass of wine sitting on the vanity like a confession nobody had gotten around to making.

Temi's phone buzzed in the little clutch she'd forgotten she was still holding. A text from Pri.

*Everything okay?? Cam just posted then deleted a story that said "I can't do this" and I'm losing my mind over here*

Temi typed back with shaking thumbs. *She ran. I don't know where she went. Call you later.*

She tried Camille's number. Straight to voicemail. She tried again. Same thing.

By the time Temi made it back up to the rooftop, the scene had shifted from chaos into something quieter and somehow worse. Guests stood in uncertain clusters, murmuring, pretending not to watch the two men standing near the altar having what was clearly meant to be a private conversation and clearly was not one.

Adrian's lawyer, a compact, gray haired man Temi vaguely recognized from the engagement dinner, was speaking low and fast, gesturing with a folder he'd apparently produced from somewhere despite the fact that this had been a wedding rehearsal ten minutes ago, not a boardroom. Adrian himself stood very still, listening, his jaw so tight Temi could see the muscle working from ten feet away.

She caught fragments as she approached. Something about the estate. Something about a deadline. The word *clause* said twice in the same breath as the word *Saturday*, like the two were somehow the same emergency.

"Is she okay?" Temi asked, cutting in without meaning to. "Has anyone found her?"

The lawyer glanced at her, clearly weighing whether she counted as someone who was allowed to be part of this conversation, and decided, apparently, that she did not. He turned back to Adrian and lowered his voice further.

Adrian, though, looked at her.

It was the first time all evening he'd looked at her like she was a person and not a fixture of Camille's bridal party, and something about the directness of it caught Temi off guard. Up close, without the practiced stillness he'd been wearing all night, he looked almost young. Almost scared, in a way that had nothing to do with the folder in his lawyer's hand and everything to do with the empty spot at the head of the aisle where his bride should have been standing.

"Ms. Callahan," he said. His voice was quieter than she expected. "Do you know where she went?"

"No," Temi admitted. "I looked everywhere I could think of. Her phone's off."

Something flickered across his face, gone almost before she registered it. Not heartbreak, exactly. Temi would turn that moment over in her mind a hundred times in the weeks to come and never quite land on the right word for it. Not heartbreak. Something closer to a man watching the last domino in a very long line finally tip over, after months, maybe years, of bracing for exactly this.

"Mr. Voss," the lawyer said, an edge of real urgency in it now, "we need to talk. Now. Before anyone starts asking questions we can't answer."

Adrian didn't move right away. He kept looking at Temi, like he was trying to solve something and she was, inexplicably, part of the equation.

"Go," Temi said quietly. "I'll keep trying to find her."

He nodded once, and let the lawyer steer him away toward the far end of the rooftop, past the urns of white roses that had cost, Temi happened to know because Camille had told her with a mixture of horror and delight, more than Temi's entire monthly studio rent.

Sable materialized at Temi's elbow, clipboard abandoned somewhere, mascara starting to smudge at the corners of her eyes despite twenty years of professional composure. "I have never," she said, in the low, controlled voice of a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will, "in my entire career, had a bride actually run."

"Neither has she," Temi said, and meant it. Whatever Camille was going through, whatever had finally cracked tonight, this wasn't a woman who did things like this. Camille Whitfield planned everything. She'd had this wedding mapped out in a color coded binder since the day Adrian proposed. Running from it wasn't drama. It was collapse.

Temi's phone buzzed again. This time it was a text from an unknown number, and her stomach dropped before she even opened it, some animal instinct telling her whatever was coming wasn't going to be good news.

*It's Camille. Please don't try to find me tonight. I'm safe. I just can't marry him. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, especially to you. Please tell his family whatever you need to. I'll explain everything when I can.*

Temi read it twice. Then a third time, like the words might rearrange themselves into something that made more sense.

She looked up, across the rooftop, to where Adrian stood with his lawyer near the parapet wall, the Manhattan skyline glittering gold and indifferent behind them both. His phone was already out. Someone, somewhere, had clearly sent him the same message, or one close enough to it, because whatever composure he'd been holding onto for the lawyer's benefit was gone now, stripped away in real time while forty guests pretended not to watch.

Temi's phone buzzed a third time.

Not from Camille.

From Adrian.

She stared at his name on her screen, baffled by the fact that he even had her number, until she remembered the group thread Camille had set up weeks ago for wedding logistics, the one where Temi had never once texted him directly.

*I need to speak with you. Alone. Tonight, if possible.*

Temi's thumb hovered over the screen, her pulse loud in her own ears, the rooftop suddenly feeling very small and very far from the ordinary Tuesday she'd woken up expecting.

She had no idea what he wanted.

She had even

less idea that saying yes to that message was about to unravel her entire life.