The silence that followed Clara’s command was absolute, heavy enough to crush the breath out of the guests. Nobody moved. The servers holding the towels around Clara’s parents stood frozen, their eyes darting nervously toward the bandstand.
“Clara, what the hell are you talking about?” Ethan demanded, taking a deliberate step toward the bandstand. He didn’t yell, but the venom in his voice was unmistakable. “Put the phone down. You are embarrassing yourself in front of our friends.”
“Our friends?” Clara echoed, stepping away from the microphone stand. She kept the phone pressed to her ear, listening to the furious clicking of a keyboard on the other end of the line. “Look around, Ethan. Look at my parents. Do friends push a sixty-year-old man and his wife into a swimming pool as a joke? Or was that just another one of your mother’s little tests?”
Olivia stood up, her navy gown rustling against the gold chair. Her diamond necklace caught the sunlight, flashing sharply. “It was an accident, Clara. The groomsmen were drinking. They bumped into Arthur. There is no need for this hysterical display. Now hang up that phone before you do something you cannot undo.”
“I’m afraid it’s already done, Olivia,” Clara replied, her voice cold and level. “Harrison? Are the accounts locked?”
A crisp, professional voice crackled through the phone’s speaker, loud enough for Ethan to hear as he took another step forward. “The accounts are locked, Ms. Devereux. The Sterling protocol is fully active. The joint escrow has been frozen, and the merger capital has been rerouted back to the Devereux holding accounts.”
Ethan stopped dead in his tracks. The champagne glass in his hand trembled slightly, a few drops of pale gold liquid spilling over the rim and staining the pristine white marble beneath his polished shoes.
“You didn’t,” Ethan breathed, the blood draining from his face. “You couldn’t have. The transfer was set to execute when the officiant pronounced us. The bankers were waiting on my signal.”
“And I gave mine first,” Clara said. She lowered the phone, though she didn’t end the call. “You really thought I was stupid, Ethan? You thought I didn’t know why you suddenly pushed the wedding date forward by six months? You didn’t want to marry me. You needed the Devereux capital to cover the margins your mother lost in the European markets.”
“Keep your voice down!” Olivia hissed, looking around frantically at the guests, many of whom were now whispering furiously to one another. “Clara, this is family business. You do not air this in public. You are having a panic attack. Ethan, go up there and get her.”
“Don’t take another step, Ethan,” a new voice rang out.
Ethan looked at Arthur, then back at Clara, a muscle feathering in his jaw. He forced a laugh, a dry, hollow sound that echoed awkwardly over the terrace.
“Arthur, please,” Ethan said, holding up his free hand in a placating gesture. “Let’s all just take a breath. Clara is stressed. The wedding planning, the merger—it’s been a lot. And the incident by the pool was deeply unfortunate. I’ll have the groomsmen apologize immediately.”
“They didn’t just bump into us, Ethan,” Beatrice Devereux said, her voice shaking slightly from the cold water, but her eyes fierce as she stepped up beside her husband. She wrung out the edge of her soaked blue dress. “I heard your mother tell them to do it. She told them it would be a hilarious photo opportunity to see the ‘new money’ take a bath.”
A collective gasp rippled through the seated guests. Olivia’s face flushed a deep, ugly red.
“That is a complete fabrication!” Olivia snapped, glaring at Beatrice. “I said no such thing! You simply lost your footing on the wet marble. You are trying to deflect from your daughter’s complete mental breakdown!”
“Is it a breakdown, Olivia?” Clara asked, walking slowly down the two steps of the bandstand. The heavy lace of her train dragged elegantly behind her. “Harrison, are you still there?”
“I am, Clara,” the wealth manager’s voice replied from the phone.
“Read Olivia the current balance of the Sterling primary holding account,” Clara instructed.
“Clara, don’t do this,” Ethan warned, his voice dropping into a dangerous, threatening register. He tossed his champagne glass onto the grass, closing the distance between them. “You are making a massive mistake.”
“Read it, Harrison,” Clara repeated, her eyes locked on Ethan.
“The current available liquidity in the Sterling primary holding account is negative forty-two million dollars,” Harrison recited crisply. “Pending the failure of the Devereux capital injection, the Sterling estate is in default.”
The terrace erupted into chaos. Whispers turned into loud, shocked murmurs. High-society guests leaned in, eyes wide, devouring the scandalous collapse of one of the city’s most prominent families.
