“Get up, Merritt. It was a joke!” My sister laughed above the marble staircase while I lay below, my surgical brace twisted sideways, my foot numb. Mom told guests to stop staring. Dad asked whether the photographer had captured my fall. The quartet stopped playing. Then my sister’s fiancé turned toward her, disgust written across his face. He finally spoke....

The bridal suite on the second floor smelled of hairspray, expensive gardenia perfume, and panic.

Through the heavy double doors, I could hear Sloan’s voice screeching at the top of her lungs.

“What do you mean the veil is two inches too short?! Did you not measure the train in Paris? This is couture! I am paying you five thousand dollars to make me look like royalty, not a common department store mannequin!”

Greer pushed my wheelchair through the doorway without knocking.

The heavy brass handle slammed against the wallpapered interior wall with an explosive crack.

The room went dead silent.

Two makeup artists froze with their brushes suspended above Sloan’s cheekbones. A junior seamstress dropped a handful of pearl-headed pins onto the hardwood floor.

Sloan sat in the center of the room in a silk monogrammed robe, her hair styled into intricate, glittering curls. Beside her, my mother, Blythe, was sipping an iced matcha latte while inspecting a diamond tennis bracelet under the vanity lights. Bellamy was lounging on a chaise, tapping her phone screen.

Blythe was the first to turn. When she saw me sitting in the wheelchair, her mouth tightened into an ugly, furious line.

“Merritt! What on earth are you doing here?” Blythe snapped, setting her drink down hard enough to splash green liquid across the glass table. “I told you to apologize by nine! It’s nearly ten! And what is that monstrous contraption you’re sitting in? Are you intentionally trying to humiliate this family in front of the vendors?”

“Out,” Greer commanded, stepping past my chair.

The makeup artists looked at Greer’s charcoal suit, Arthur’s leather briefcase, and the icy fury in my eyes. Without a single word, they gathered their kits and scrambled out the door, pulling the junior seamstress with them.

The heavy door clicked shut behind them.

Sloan stood up, clutching her robe against her throat. “Merritt, get that ugly thing out of my suite right now. The photographer will be here in twenty minutes for the bridal party portraits. You look disgusting.”

“Take a look at this, Sloan,” I said, resting my hands on the wheelchair rims.

Arthur pulled a certified document from his coat and laid it on the vanity table, right over her scattered makeup palettes.

Sloan glanced at it, bored. “What is this? More of your insurance paperwork?”

“It’s a criminal complaint for identity theft and corporate wire fraud, Sloan,” Arthur said, his voice flat and devastating. “Your father used Merritt’s corporate credit card to pay your $42,500 catering bill last night. The charge is being reversed in twelve minutes.”

Blythe let out a sharp, theatrical laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous! Judson simply handled an oversight. Merritt makes plenty of money with those foreign cargo ships! She can float her sister’s wedding for a few weeks until our family trust liquidates its quarterly bonds!”

“There are no bonds, Mom,” I said, looking directly into Blythe’s cold eyes. “I had Arthur run Dad’s credit report this morning. The family trust has been overdrawn since November. Dad took out a second mortgage on the house in Greenwich to pay for Sloan’s designer deposits. You didn't have the money to pay the estate, so you stole my corporate card out of my purse while I was lying broken at the bottom of the stairs.”

Sloan’s face shifted. The bratty, petulant heiress vanished, replaced by a snarling, desperate predator.

“You owe me this!” Sloan hissed, stepping toward my wheelchair, her finger jabbing the air inches from my nose. “You’ve always been the bitter, jealous older sister! You think because you work on dirty docks and wear steel boots that you’re better than me? This wedding is my one chance to enter Newport society! Thatcher’s family has real money! Real influence! If this wedding is interrupted, you will ruin my entire future!”

“You ruined my leg, Sloan,” I whispered.

“Oh, stop crying about your stupid knee!” she yelled, tossing her hair back with a vicious sneer. “You fell because you’re clumsy! You’ve always been a lumbering, heavy cow! I barely touched you!”

Bellamy cleared her throat nervously from the chaise lounge, looking down at her phone.

“Is that what happened, Bellamy?” Arthur asked smoothly, turning toward my cousin. “Because we have the video.”

The room went completely, terrifyingly cold.

Sloan’s sneer froze on her face. “What video?”

Arthur tapped his tablet. The screen illuminated with the high-definition clip, the audio playing at maximum volume through the suite’s speakers.

Sloan’s voice rang out from the tablet, loud and clear: Move! The flowers are crooked!

Then the unmistakable sound of her heel catching my ankle, her shoulder driving into my back, the sickening crack of my tibia shattering against the marble, and Sloan’s high-pitched laughter echoing over the quartet: Get up, Merritt! It was a joke!

Behind her, on the recording, Bellamy’s voice could be heard chuckling: Oh my God, that was perfect.

Bellamy turned gray. She dropped her phone onto her lap as if the device had suddenly caught fire. “Where... where did you get that?”

“Julian sent it,” I said softly.