On the Night of the Wedding, I Overheard My Husband’s Conversation with My Best Friend, but When I Smiled at Them, Felix’s Face Changed

Ten minutes after the wedding ended, I found my husband and my best friend in a dark corner of the garden, and hearing their conversation made the wedding ring on my finger feel like a foreign object.

The Davenport estate looked like a fairy tale that night. Thousands of white flowers glowed among the live oaks, candles floated in the pool, and champagne glasses glittered like crystal pyramids on the marble tables. Daisy Rowen had planned everything.

Of course, she was the one who had to plan it.

Since the age of twelve, she had opened every door in my life, while behaving as though she were giving me the right to choose.

I heard her laughter before I saw her, from behind the wall. It was not the loud, refined laughter she used with philanthropists and photographers. This laughter was low. Familiar. The kind that belongs only to someone very close.

I moved away from the flower-covered wall and walked toward the gazebo.

Felix was standing in front of Daisy. His hand had slid over my friend’s bare back, and his lips were touching Daisy’s temple. My new husband. My closest friend.

For a moment, I thought there would be an explanation.

Then Felix said:

“Thirty days.”

Daisy tilted her head back.

“Thirty days,” she repeated. “Keep her calm until the vote.”

I gripped the glass so hard that the ice scratched against it.

“She will postpone the sale again,” Felix said.

“Because you are pushing too hard.”

“I have thirty-eight million reasons to push.”

“It took me two years to bring her this far. Do not ruin everything now.”

Felix’s voice hardened.

“I know how to control my wife.”

Daisy snickered.

“No. You know how to control the Lydia I created.”

Something froze in my chest.

The glass broke. A thin red line appeared near my wrist, but no one heard the quiet shattering of glass over the orchestra.

I stepped back. One step. Then another.

All morning I had believed that I was marrying the person who knew me better than anyone. He knew that I did not like singing at birthdays, but that I loved handwritten cards. He knew that my mother played the same old melody every Sunday when she made pancakes. To that very melody, among the night flowers, he had proposed to me.

And now I understood that my secrets had not been signs of love, but someone else’s instructions.

I went out into the service corridor. Leaning against the wall, my knees barely held me.

“Lydia.”

I turned around. Cormac Cavendish was standing twenty steps away. Felix’s older brother was the only person that evening who did not fit into his formal clothes. His jacket sleeve was wrinkled, his collar was open, and on his wrist was an old copper watch whose second hand ticked loudly.

His eyes examined my injured hand first, then my face.

“What happened?”

“I found your brother with Daisy.”

Cormac was not surprised. That was what frightened me.

“You knew?”

“No. But I had suspicions about Felix for many reasons.”

“They said thirty days. The vote. Thirty-eight million.”

Cormac understood immediately.

“The coastal sale?”

I nodded. Five historic resorts, two thousand two hundred hectares of land, and dozens of families who had lived there for generations. Felix called it redevelopment. I called it abandoning our family.

“Does he know you heard?”

“No.”

“Daisy?”

“Neither does she.”

Cormac looked toward the glass door. Felix was coming out of the hall, and Daisy was behind him, adjusting her earring. Both of them were looking for me.

“What do you need?” Cormac asked.

“A plan.”

His jaw tightened.

“Then smile.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. Your husband has already seen you.”

Felix stopped on the other side of the door. His eyes were examining my face. Not with love. With suspicion.

Then I did the hardest thing in my life.

I smiled.

Felix smiled at me too.

Cormac told me so quietly that only I heard him:

“Whatever happens, do not show that you know the performance is over.”

At that same moment Felix opened the door and came toward me. In his hand was a small black folder that I had not noticed until then. His hand moved exactly toward its clasp…

Felix stopped in front of me and kissed me as if I had not heard his secret a few minutes earlier.

“Here you are, my darling,” he said.

“I needed some air.”

Daisy put a hand on my shoulder.

“A wedding day is very emotional. You are probably tired.”

“Probably,” I answered, keeping my smile.

Cormac took my hand.

“Her wound needs to be treated.”

“I will take care of it,” Felix said.

“No,” I interrupted him calmly for the first time. “Cormac will come with me.”

Felix’s smile disappeared for one second.

In the bedroom, Cormac locked the door and wrapped my hand in a clean towel. His copper watch was still ticking.

“Why thirty days?” I asked.

“Until the vote. If the Davenport heir signs, no one will be able to stop the agreement.”

“I have not signed.”

Cormac looked at me.

“Not yet. But the lawyers will come tomorrow. Felix will try to convince you that this is only temporary consent.”

“And Daisy knows all my weak points.”

“Then let them think they are still seeing that Lydia.”},{

A box of wedding invitations lay on the table. On its lid, in my mother’s handwriting, it said: “Do not forget whom you trust.” Years ago, I had thought this little piece of paper was just a joke.

Now Cormac carefully picked it up.

“Your mother knew,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He pressed on the box’s double bottom with his fingernail. The wooden panel lifted slightly, and the corner of a dark blue folder appeared beneath it.

Cormac exhaled.

“If this is what I think it is, Felix will not reach thirty days…”

He opened the folder and looked at the first page. Then his face changed completely…

Cormac pulled the folder out completely. Inside were a letter sealed in my mother’s handwriting, several bank statements, and documents certified with a notary’s seal.

“It says here that your mother left all this two years earlier,” he said.

“Two years earlier?”

“Before she became ill.”

Only the ticking of the watch could be heard in the room. My fingers grew so cold as if it were winter outside.

Only my name was written on the letter’s envelope. I recognized my mother’s handwriting at once—the letters leaned slightly to the right, as if each word were trying to escape.

“Open it,” Cormac told me.

“Why did you find it?”

“Because your mother left it with me. She told me to give it to you only if you married Felix and the sale documents were placed before you.”},{

I tore open the envelope.

“Lydia, if you are reading this, Felix has done everything faster than I expected. Daisy was never only a friend. For years she used your trust to transfer the right to manage our property to people useful to her.”

My breath caught in my throat.

The next page was an audit report. Millions of dollars were being transferred into funds created by Daisy, while part of the money was returning to the same investment group that Felix was presenting as the buyer of the coast.

“That is why they needed my vote,” I said.

“Not only your vote,” Cormac answered. “Your signature and your public support. If you personally approved the sale, all opposition would look like an emotional whim.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Lydia?” Felix’s voice sounded. “Are you all right?”

Cormac hid the folder under the wedding photo album.

“No one knows that we found this,” he whispered.

I opened the door.

Felix stood on the threshold, holding the same black folder.

“You need to sign several documents tomorrow morning,” he told me. “It is a simple formality.”

“If it is simple, why did you bring it on the wedding night?”

I saw the first real fear in his eyes.

Daisy appeared behind him.

“Because Felix wants everything finished quickly.”

“In thirty days,” I answered.

They both looked at me.

They thought I was still the woman they had created. They thought I would never find my mother’s letter.

Behind me, Cormac quietly turned on his phone. A red light came on.

“Sign, Lydia,” Felix said. “Or tomorrow you will learn how expensive it is for me when someone resists.”

I looked toward the folder and, for the first time, did not hide my smile.

“Until tomorrow, Felix.”

They left.

Cormac saved the recording, but at that same moment a message came to his phone from an unknown number: “You have not yet seen your mother’s last secret. Go to the old harbor warehouse at six in the morning, alone.”

Cormac held the screen out to me.

Below it was one photograph—my mother, Felix, and Daisy in one room, taken several days before her death…