I set my bouquet down on the altar very slowly, the way you set down something fragile you don’t want to break. “Delilah,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake, which surprised me. “You brought receipts. That’s actually helpful.” She laughed, loud and sharp, and turned to the crowd like she was hosting the show now. “Oh, this is gonna be good. The little bride has a comeback.” That’s when the heavy oak doors at the back of the sanctuary opened, and everyone turned. Three women in charcoal suits walked in first — my legal team from the firm I’d been quietly building for the last four years while Marcus thought I was “just doing freelance.” Behind them came my father’s business partner, the district attorney, and a court clerk carrying a manila folder thick as a Bible. And behind them, my mother — who I hadn’t spoken to in eight years, the woman whose name is on half the hospitals in this state — walked down the aisle in navy silk and stopped exactly one pew from Delilah. “Sweetheart,” my mother said, smiling only with her mouth, “you have no idea whose daughter you just humiliated on camera.” Delilah’s smirk cracked. Marcus finally looked up, and I watched him understand, in real time, that the woman he’d been cheating on wasn’t the naive small-town girl he’d sold to Delilah for six years. My lead attorney opened the folder and set a document on the altar next to my bouquet — the prenup Marcus had signed, and beside it, the deed to the Brooklyn apartment Delilah had just bragged about. It was in my name. It had always been in my name. “Delilah,” I said, picking up the mic she’d dropped, “the lease you mentioned? I’m your landlord. And as of this morning, I’m also your employer’s biggest client.” Her sonogram slid out of her hand and drifted to the carpet. Marcus reached for my wrist and I stepped back, calm as still water. “Get out of my church,” I said, “before I decide to be less generous.”
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