Chapter 5 - Sisters and Sinners
"Victoria?" I repeat the name, the word feeling foreign and poisonous on my tongue. I looked between my sobbing fiancée and the woman standing in the center of the altar. "Your sister? Chloe, you told me your sister cut ties with your family years ago. You said she lived in Oregon."
Chloe pressed a trembling hand against her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. "She did... she hasn't spoken to me in five years. Not since... not since our parents left the family estate to me instead of her."
Victoria let out a sharp, hysterical laugh that echoed off the high cathedral arches. "Estate? You call that rundown farmhouse an estate? While you were living the high life in Manhattan with your rich, successful tech-entrepreneur fiancé, I was drowning in gambling debts and payday loans!"
She pointed a finger directly at my chest, her eyes wide with manic fury.
"Do you have any idea what it's like to watch my twin sister—who used to share every single thing with me—fly off to live in a penthouse while I'm eating ramen in a motel room?" Victoria shrieked. "I deserved this life! I looked identical to her before that stupid truck accident carved up her ear! All I had to do was wear a little silicone prosthetic adhesive behind my ear, put on her dress, and walk down the aisle to a man with fifty million dollars in the bank!"
The congregation gasped. Murmurs and angry whispers rippled through the pews. Several men stood up, ready to physically drag Victoria out of the church.
"You psycho," Chloe whispered, her voice shaking with a mixture of horror and betrayal. "You locked me in a broom closet just to steal my wedding?"
"I was going to get rid of you after the reception," Victoria said casually, her lack of remorse sending a chill down my spine. "Just a little sleeping pill in your water bottle this morning, and boom—by tomorrow, you'd be found wandering miles away with amnesia. I would have been Mrs. Mark Sterling, living the dream."
She looked at me, her expression turned into a desperate, pleading leer. "Mark, think about it! We already look identical! Once the makeup is fixed, nobody would even know the difference. We can still—"
"Shut your mouth," I said.
My voice wasn't loud, but it carried the terrifying weight of a man pushed past the absolute brink of human endurance. I gently handed Chloe over to Aunt Beatrice, who rushed forward with tears in her eyes to wrap a coat around my fiancée's shoulders.
Then, I walked up the marble steps towards Victoria.
May you like
She shrank back, her bravado finally cracked as she saw the look in my eyes. "Mark... what are you doing?"
"I'm not calling the police right away," I said quietly, stopping inches from her face. "Because before the cops arrive, you are going to explain why my seven-year-old daughter was the only person in a room of two hundred adults smart enough to see through your sick game."
