As the weeks passed, exhaustion set in. Mia spent her lunch breaks fixing disasters she hadn’t caused—rebooking photographers, tracking deposits, and smoothing over offended relatives. The wedding she’d dreamed of was turning into a circus orchestrated by someone who wanted her to snap.
Then came the message that cracked her trust: screenshots, sent from an unknown number. They showed fabricated bank statements and gossip threads implying she was marrying Daniel for his inheritance. “People talk,” Eleanor had said earlier that week, almost as if preparing the stage.