The Message She Held Up Before I Said “I Do”

Chapter 09 - What Celeste Didn’t Tell Me

I wanted to trust Celeste.

I also wanted to throw her out of the room.

Both feelings were honest.

She had saved me from marrying Grant, but she had also spent more than a year believing a story that required me to be either foolish or disposable.

I asked Luke for another room.

Just Celeste and me.

We sat across from each other at a small table meant for bridesmaids’ makeup bags.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then I asked the question I had avoided.

“Did you love him?”

“Yes.”

Her answer came without defense.

“Do you still?”

She looked toward the window.

“I don’t know what part of him was real.”

I understood that more than I wanted to.

Celeste told me they met through a corporate charity event eighteen months earlier. Grant said his engagement to me was complicated, mostly for family expectations, and that we were delaying the wedding because neither of us was truly committed.

He showed her photographs of himself alone at business dinners.

He complained I was never home.

Some of it was true.

I worked too much.

I canceled weekends.

I took conference calls during vacations.

But none of that made me responsible for his lies.

“Why didn’t you look me up?”

“I did.”

“And you still believed him?”

Celeste’s shame was quiet.

“He said your public posts were for your mother. He said the engagement had become part of the company image.”

I shook my head.

“That is ridiculous.”

“I know.”

She wiped her eyes.

“I know now.”

Then she admitted the part she had hidden.

Three months earlier, Grant had asked her to prepare investor materials for Northline. She created charts using financial numbers he provided.

Some of those numbers came from Hale Maritime.

“Did you know?”

“Not at first.”

“When did you know?”

“Last week.”

My anger returned.

“And you waited until the wedding?”

“I was scared.”

“So was I supposed to be less scared because you waited until I was standing in front of everyone?”

She accepted that without arguing.

Then she reached into her purse.

“I almost didn’t come.”

She handed me a folded piece of paper.

It was a printed email from Peter Sloan.

The subject line read: IF HE MARRIES HER, THEY WIN.

The message explained that Grant and Thomas were trying to obtain temporary control of my shares long enough to use them as collateral for a Northline acquisition. If the transaction closed, the debt could eventually fall back on Hale Maritime.

At the bottom, Peter had written one sentence.

Celeste, whatever you think Grant promised you, Rebecca Hale is not the woman he plans to leave behind.

I looked up.

“What does that mean?”

Celeste’s face went pale.

“Peter thinks Grant was planning to leave both of us.”

Before I could answer, my phone rang.

It was Martin, my father’s attorney.

“Rebecca,” he said, “I found something in your father’s original trust.”