My Mother Shoved Me Into a Chair and Stole My Wedding Dress, But at the Altar, My Revenge Brought Down Her Multimillion-Dollar Empire

Chloe Vance was crawling backward on the floor, trying to put distance between herself and her mother as if Eleanor were radioactive.

"I didn't know about the poison!" Chloe shrieked, her voice bouncing shrilly off the glass ceiling. "I swear to God! Clara, listen to me! I only helped with the dress! Mom told me you were going to steal all the money and cut me off! She said you hated me!"

Clara turned her gaze toward her younger sister. There was no hatred in Clara’s eyes—only a profound, hollow exhaustion.

"You didn't know, Chloe?" Clara asked softly. "Then explain the bank transfers."

Clara flicked her wrist.

The screen changed again. This time, financial ledgers flashed across the display, showing a complex web of shell corporations based in Panama, Delaware, and the Isle of Man.

"Three weeks ago," Clara explained to the stunned audience, "Chloe Vance accrued a four-point-two million dollar debt at an illicit high-stakes baccarat club in Macau. To cover her markers before the triad enforcers came to collect, Chloe and Eleanor liquidated the Arthur Vance Pediatric Diabetes Research Foundation—a charity my father spent twelve years building."

"No... no, please..." Chloe sobbed, burying her head in her hands.

"Every single dollar donated by good people in this room," Clara said, looking at the philanthropic elite sitting in the pews, "was used to pay off Chloe’s private gambling debts and buy luxury real estate in Monaco. Chloe, you didn't just hate my dress. You needed me discredited and silenced so I would never gain control of the foundation's annual audit. You sold our father's soul to cover your addiction."

Chloe looked up, her mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks, her mouth open in a soundless wail.

"She made me do it!" Chloe suddenly pointed an accusatory, manicured finger at Eleanor, turning on her mother like a rabid animal. "Mom arranged the Macau trips! Mom told me the foundation was a tax shelter anyway! She said Dad was dead and wouldn't care! She set up the shell companies! Don't send me to prison, Julian! Please, I'm your sister-in-law!"

"You are nothing to me," Julian replied, his voice colder than the Arctic sea. "And you will never be family."

Eleanor slowly lifted her head from the floor. Her soaked hair was plastered to her skull, her eyes wide, wild, and completely detached from reality. She looked at Chloe, the golden child she had spoiled, protected, and used as an accomplice.

"You treacherous little slut," Eleanor spat, lunging at Chloe right there on the marble floor. "I did everything for you! I built this life for you! I got rid of your father so you could live like a princess!"

"Get off me! You crazy psycho!" Chloe screamed, kicking her mother in the chest with her pointed high heel.

The two women, who thirty minutes ago had walked into the mansion looking like high-society royalty, were now rolling on the floor in front of Beverly Hills' elite, tearing at each other's hair, scratching, screaming obscenities that shocked the entire congregation.

Nobody moved to separate them.

The guests watched with a mixture of disgust, horror, and morbid fascination as the Vance family’s carefully curated facade of perfection imploded into a pathetic, violent brawl.

Suddenly, the heavy double doors at the back of the conservatory flew open with authority.