At seventeen minutes past noon, as the guests were settling into their seats, a black limousine came up the estate’s long drive and stopped at the grand stone entrance.

I had thought carefully about the car.

I want to be honest about that.

I did not hire it to show off money — I had long since stopped needing anyone at that wedding to think anything about me at all.

I hired it because I understood the theater of the day Grayson had built, and I intended to walk onto his stage on my own terms, at my own height, and give him exactly none of the small defeated woman he had invited to gloat over.

Across the lawn, I could see him adjust his cuffs, arrange his face into its smirk, and turn toward the car to savor the moment he’d been planning for weeks.