At 10:17 on the morning of my wedding, my older sister, Vanessa, destroyed my dress.

Daniel didn’t look at the torn lace lying like a dead creature on the floor. He didn't look at the stained carpet or the smelling salts the seamstress had abandoned on the side table.

He looked directly into my eyes, crossed the room in three strides, and pulled me into his arms.

He was careful, his broad hands resting gently against my waist so as not to graze the fiery red patch of skin across my upper shoulder. The familiar scent of cedarwood, bay rum, and rain-washed cedar on his skin washed over me, and the last of my frantic adrenaline collapsed into a shuddering sob against his chest.

"I’m sorry," I choked out, my fingers curling into the lapels of his jacket. "I’m so sorry, Daniel. The wedding is ruined. The dress is gone. The police are on the front lawn. Everyone is staring. Your parents must be mortified—"

"Stop," Daniel murmured, pressing a kiss against the crown of my head. "Don't you dare apologize for surviving an attack, Emily. Look at me."

I tilted my face up. His slate-blue eyes were burning with a protective fury I had never seen before in all the five years we had been together.

"My parents don't care about the gossip," Daniel said firmly. "My mother is downstairs right now telling the guests that anyone who whispers a negative word about you will answer to her personally. And my father is currently telling your father that if he attempts to post bail for Vanessa before the ceremony is over, he will pull every single corporate account his bank holds with your father's firm."

I caught my breath. "Daniel... what did Detective Briggs mean down there? What hard drives? What does Vanessa have to do with your firm?"

Daniel sighed, reaching up to gently brush a tear from my cheek. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a manila envelope, sliding out several printed sheets of paper covered in financial spreadsheets and IP address logs.

"Two weeks ago, when my firm’s proprietary design files for the harbor expansion project were leaked to the municipal bidding committee, the IP address was traced back to a public coffee shop three blocks from your office," Daniel explained, his voice low and dangerous. "The authorities originally suspected an inside job from my engineering team. But I knew my people. And more importantly, I knew the password that was used to access the encrypted server."

My eyes narrowed as I looked at the log sheet. "What password?"

"It was the date of your college graduation," Daniel said softly. "A password I only used on my personal home network. The only person who had visited our house without us being present in the last month was Vanessa, when she came over claiming she needed to drop off the bridesmaid fabric swatches while we were out picking up the wedding rings."

The pieces began to tumble into place with terrifying speed.

"She went through your home office?" I asked, horror dawning on me.

"She didn't just go through it," Daniel replied. "She copied the client database. She took my financial tokens. And three days ago, she attempted to wire forty-five thousand dollars from my business operating account to an offshore holding entity registered in the Cayman Islands under a shell company called 'L.V. Holdings'—Leigh Vanessa Holdings."

"She tried to rob you?" My voice was barely a squeak. "Before the wedding?"

"She didn't just try to rob me, Em. She wanted to frame me for embezzlement. She sent anonymous tips to the State Licensing Board claiming that I was laundering money through our wedding vendors to build our new house. She wanted me disbarred. She wanted me disgraced. She wanted you standing at an altar waiting for a man who was being arrested by the FBI."

The sheer, breathtaking scale of the malice left me dizzy. I had to sit back down on the velvet ottoman, clutching my silk robe tightly around myself.

"Why?" I whispered, my gaze drifting to the window where the flashing blue lights of the cruiser were finally disappearing down the long oak-lined driveway. "I knew she was jealous. I knew she hated that I wasn't the quiet, obedient little shadow who stayed in her corner anymore. But to ruin your life? To send you to prison? Why would she go that far?"

"Because in Vanessa's mind, the world is a finite pie," Jenna’s voice came from the doorway. She walked in holding a glass of ice water and two extra-strength painkillers, handing them to me with a look of fierce solidarity. "If you have a slice of happiness, Emily, she genuinely believes it was stolen from her plate. She couldn't stand that you built a real career without Mom and Dad buying it for you. She couldn't stand that Daniel looked at you like you were the only woman on earth, while every man she ever dated ran for the hills the second they realized how hollow she was inside."

"Jenna's right," Daniel said, kneeling in front of me so we were at eye level. "Vanessa didn't destroy your dress because she was having a bad morning. She destroyed it because she received an email at nine o'clock this morning from the State Board informing her that their investigation into my firm was closed with prejudice—because the authorities had already flagged her IP address and cleared my name completely."

I gasped. "She knew she had failed."

"She knew the net was closing in," Daniel nodded grimly. "She knew that within forty-eight hours, she was going to be questioned by financial investigators. The glue wasn't an impulse. It was the temper tantrum of a cornered predator who realized she couldn't break our future, so she decided to burn whatever piece of your present she could get her hands on."

I looked down at the floor, where the sheared fragments of lace lay ruined in the dust. The eighteen thousand dollars, the endless overtime, the dream of walking toward Daniel in that sea of silk and pearls—it was all gone. A symbol of my sister's rotting soul left behind in my dressing room.

A soft knock at the outer door interrupted the silence.

It was my father.

He stepped inside the suite, his shoulders hunched, his silver hair uncharacteristically disheveled. The confident, booming posture of the patriarch who ruled the Charleston country club circuit was entirely gone. He looked ten years older, his face as pale as parchment.

"Emily," he said, his voice cracking with an emotion I had never heard from him before. "Emily, my God..."

He stopped dead in his tracks as his gaze fell on the scarred, yellowed remnants of the gown, then moved to the blistering red burns on my back where the chemical had eaten through my skin.

He covered his mouth with a trembling hand.