Chapter 3 - The Guest Dress Code
Seeing Daniel's toxic ex-girlfriend in the bridesmaid lineup felt like a physical punch to the gut.
Vanesa knew exactly how much damage that woman had done to my brother's mental health.
She had specifically chosen her just to prove that she held absolute power over Daniel's entire life.
I refused to give Vanesa the satisfaction of seeing me lose my temper on her front porch.
I simply turned around, walked back to my car, and drove away in total silence.
My new strategy was simple: I would attend the wedding strictly as a guest to support my brother, and nothing more.
I thought stepping down from the bridal party would finally give me some peace.
I was entirely wrong.
A few days later, a heavy, wax-sealed envelope arrived in my mailbox.
It was a formal Guest Dress Code Directive addressed explicitly to me.
Vanesa had assigned specific, highly unflattering colors to the groom's side of the family.
She specifically demanded that I wear a muted, swampy green shade that she knew washed out my complexion.
The letter also explicitly banned me from wearing any jewelry, claiming it would distract from the bride's radiance.
I laughed out loud at the absolute absurdity of her controlling behavior.
I decided to comply maliciously.
I spent an entire weekend hunting down the most expensive, elegantly tailored emerald green gown in the entire city.
It fit within her ridiculous color parameters, but it made me look absolutely breathtaking.
While shopping online for matching shoes, I temporarily logged into the shared family cloud account to find an old photo.
Daniel and I still shared a digital storage folder from when we ran a small graphic design business together.
As I scrolled through the files, I noticed a newly created, highly encrypted folder titled Wedding Expenses.
Because Daniel always used the exact same password for everything, I easily unlocked it.
My heart dropped into my stomach as I opened a massive spreadsheet.
Vanesa was not just planning a lavish wedding.
She was secretly transferring massive amounts of Daniel's personal savings into a private, offshore account under her mother's name.
I frantically clicked through the bank statements, realizing she had already drained over forty thousand dollars.
Before I could even process the magnitude of the theft, my phone buzzed with an incoming text message.
May you like
It was from Daniel's phone, but the cold, calculated tone was unmistakably Vanesa's.
The message warned me that if I ever logged into that cloud account again, Daniel would file a police report against me for digital trespassing.
