Chapter 2 - The Public HumiliationThe heavy mahogany doors of the Grand Monroe ballroom swung open abruptly, cutting off the low hum of conversation.
All heads turned toward the entrance, expecting to see the double doors part for Ava Montgomery in her custom Parisian silk gown. Instead, wedding coordinator Chloe stood alone in the doorway, her face stark white, clutching a piece of paper in trembling hands.
Ethan frowned, stepping down from the altar. “Where is she? Why isn’t she walking down the aisle?”
Chloe hurried down the center aisle past five hundred staring guests, her heels clicking frantically against the marble floor. She reached Ethan and thrust the hotel stationery into his hands without a word.
Ethan looked down at the note. His eyes scanned the crisp handwriting once, twice, three times.
The blood drained entirely from his face. The confident, smug smirk he had worn all morning vanished, replaced by a look of utter, blind shock.
“What is this?” Harrison Drake demanded, standing up from the front row. He strode over to his son, snatching the note from Ethan’s frozen fingers. As Harrison read the words, his face mottled with purple rage.
In the third row, Brooke—dressed in a modest dove-gray dress she had chosen to blend into the background—covered her mouth with her hand, though a tiny, triumphant gleam flashed in her eyes.
“What’s happening?” whispered a prominent senator’s wife in the second row. “Where’s the bride?”
“Did she run away?” a hedge fund partner murmured, louder this time.
Whispers erupted across the ballroom like dry brushfire. Within seconds, the whispers turned into open murmurs, then snickers, and finally, a rolling wave of collective shock. For the first time in the history of New York society, a Drake had been left standing at the altar in front of the entire elite establishment.
Ethan’s hands began to shake. He crushed the note in his fist.
“Ava,” he choked out, his voice cracking slightly over the microphone attached to his lapel. He spun around, looking toward the side exit. “Ava!”
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He didn't know that three miles away, at JFK International Airport, Ava Montgomery was already seated in the first-class lounge, sipping black coffee, her passport tucked safely into her leather bag, watching the sunrise over the Atlantic.
Back in the ballroom, Harrison Drake grabbed his son by the shoulder, his voice low and venomous. “Find her, Ethan. Find her right now. If the board finds out our corporate merger depended on you marrying a Montgomery and you blew it because of some petty domestic disaster, Drake Capital will collapse before the market opens on Monday.”
