Before I Say I Do: The Billionaire Heiress Returns

"Before I say I do," I tell twenty-three million people, "I want everyone to hear something."

Asher's grip tightens on my hands at the altar.

His cuff slides back and the cedar hits me—sharp, green, wrong.

And two blank years split open inside my skull.

He was driving that night.

Mia was in the passenger seat, my best friend of thirteen years, his mouth still warm from hers.

I was in the back, my thumb pressed to a recording of them carving up my company.

He found my eyes in the rearview mirror and said, "I'm sorry. But you can't get out of this car."

Then the guardrail. Then the dark. Then two years of him at my bedside calling it love.

He told me we'd been together seven years.

He told me I'd gone out to buy his birthday cake.

He never let me learn to drive, and he never said why.

This morning I opened the safe in his study and my hands knew the code before I did.

Now I slide a voice recorder out of my bouquet, the one I pulled from behind his cufflinks box at dawn.

Asher's smile doesn't move, but his thumb goes cold against my wrist.

Mia, three rows back in lavender silk, stops breathing.

What none of them know is whose granddaughter signed the prenup.

What none of them know is who really owns the company he thinks he stole.

The officiant beams and asks if I take this man.

I press play.

***

Asher's fingers tightened around mine, the gold links of his cuffs sliding apart.

A sharp, biting scent of cedar flooded my nose.

Pain drove through my temples like a long, rusted nail.

It was the third thing that didn't fit.

The first had been his absolute refusal to let me learn to drive, a rule enforced with quiet, suffocating persistence for two years. The second was Mia. My best friend of thirteen years had supposedly moved abroad, yet she hadn't sent a single letter, text, or email since she left.

And now, the cedar.

I smiled. The cameras were rolling, broadcasting this moment to twenty-three million viewers. The grand cathedral was packed with faces I barely recognized, a sea of silk and expensive suits.

My fingers dug into the center of my bridal bouquet, past the soft petals of white roses, until I felt the cold, hard metal of the digital recorder.

This morning, I had stood in Asher's study, staring at the keypad on his wall safe. My hands remembered the code before my brain did. A sequence I didn't know I knew. The recorder was inside, the very one I had hidden away two years ago.

The cedar scent clawed at my memory, tearing down the walls I had built.

Two years ago. His birthday.

Asher was driving. Mia sat in the passenger seat. My best friend. His mistress.

I was in the back, clutching my phone. The screen displayed the audio file I had just captured—the two of them, voices hushed but clear, plotting to siphon thirty percent of my company's equity.

I looked up. Asher's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "But you can't get out of this car."

I had mortgaged my coastal studio, a property worth four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, just to save his failing business before we even got engaged. I had bled for him.

The priest's voice pulled me back.

"Do you, Vivienne Lockhart, take this man..."

Asher beamed at me, the picture of a devoted groom. His thumb stroked the back of my hand.

I looked at him. Really looked at him. The man who had orchestrated my ruin, who had stolen two years of my life, standing here expecting me to pledge my soul to him on national television.

My grip on the bouquet shifted.

"Vivienne?" Asher whispered, his smile faltering just a fraction.

The priest paused, a polite, questioning look on his face. The cathedral fell silent. The silence of twenty-three million people waiting.

I pulled my hand from Asher's grasp.

His eyes widened, a flash of genuine panic crossing his features. "Vivienne, what are you doing?"

I reached into the flowers.

"Before I answer that," I said, my voice carrying clearly through the microphone clipped to the priest's robes.

I pulled the silver recorder free from the roses, holding it up so the light caught the metal.

"I want everyone here to listen to a recording from two years ago."