Chapter 2

Friends who had previously booked their weddings through me crowded around to confront me as well.

"Laurel, we all paid 30,000 dollars for our weddings with you. But Sloane says the real cost is only 500. So should you be refunding us the difference?"

"Yeah, you pocketed tens of thousands from each of us!"

I let out a cold laugh.

"Ladies, your weddings are over and done with. I used real materials, and I put together flawless events for every single one of you. That money is not coming back."

When they saw I was not budging, they exploded.

"Scammer! Give us our money back!"

"If you will not refund us, we are calling the police! We will have you charged with fraud!"

Sloane watched the pile-on with open satisfaction.

"Ladies, someone who would rip off her own friends was never going to hand money back willingly. I say we get the word out before she does this to anyone else."

Several of them drafted the whole story on the spot and posted it across social media.

Within the hour, people flooded in demanding refunds, and there was no stopping them.

Sloane, meanwhile, could not keep up with her phone. It rang nonstop with calls from people wanting to book.

Once everyone had left, my assistant Paige Smith rushed over with her phone.

"Boss, that Sloane woman is trashing you all over the internet! And those people from the shop are all backing her up!"

A handful of inflammatory headlines had been pushed to the top of the trending topics.

"My So-Called Best Friend Scammed Me at My Own Wedding!"

"One Wedding Was All It Took to See Who Really Cared!"

Commenters who had no idea what actually happened tore me apart.

"How does someone like that even call herself a friend?"

"She probably treated her girlfriends like walking ATMs."

"Block her and never look back!"

Paige was red in the face with anger. "Laurel! How can they slander you like this? Every single wedding, you designed a custom plan from scratch. The gowns, the venue builds, the reception menus. The real cost blew past 30,000 dollars every single time.

"They got top-of-the-line service, and now they are turning around and dragging your name through the mud!"

I reached over and patted her on the shoulder with a faint smile. "Do not get worked up over it. When money is on the table, so-called friendship does not mean a thing. Besides, I was already planning to step away from wedding planning. The organizers for Valcourt Fashion Week have reached out to me multiple times now."

I pulled up the invitation they had sent a few days earlier and called them back.

"Lisa, I have made up my mind. I am coming back."

The voice on the other end shrieked with excitement. "Laurel! You finally came to your senses and quit the wedding business! You spent all that time bending over backwards for people who treated it like you owed them. You should have walked away ages ago! Get over here, I am waiting for you in Valcourt!"

I hung up and laughed quietly at myself.

Very few people knew that I was actually a globally renowned lead designer. I had opened the wedding planning shop on a whim, and when friends started asking for help, I had wanted to give them weddings they would never forget. For every one of their events, I had pulled strings and called in personal connections for arrangements that money alone could not buy.

My husband Drew Callahan had warned me more than once that sincerity did not always earn sincerity in return, and that my friends would never appreciate what I was doing.

At the time, I had brushed it off. I had told myself that years of friendship and bonds that deep would never break down like that.

I had not expected to be proven wrong quite this fast.

It was just as well. I was done. A single event of mine was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no reason to keep fighting over a few tens of thousands with people like them.

I called a friend right away and arranged to return the storefront I had been borrowing. I had barely hung up when Drew arrived in a rush, his sister right behind him.