The photographer is suddenly beside us, her camera replaced with something that might be a taser. "Let her go."
"Who the hell are you?" Prescott demands.
"The cavalry." Someone else says, and the caterer from the gift table—massive, imposing—is there too.
Smoke grenades explode across the garden. White, thick smoke that turns the morning into fog. Guests scream, running in every direction. Father shouting orders, Donovan responding, guards converging.
"Time to go." The woman’s command cuts through the chaos, and then we're moving.
Prescott tries to maintain his grip, but the large man picks him up and sets him aside like a child's toy.
"Run." The woman commands, and I do.
The wedding dress is impossible. It catches on everything—chairs, flowers, my own feet. The train tangles, tears, tries to pull me backward like the house itself won't let me leave.
My heels sink into the grass with every step. Without thinking, I kick them off, running barefoot across the lawn as chaos erupts around us. More smoke grenades. Someone firing warning shots into the air. Guests screaming, scattering like startled birds.
Through the smoke, other figures moving—the security guards who aren't really guards, the caterers who were never here to serve food. All of them, here for me.
"The van.” Another woman joins us, pointing through the smoke.
There—black, anonymous, engine running. Freedom in the form of a vehicle that would never be allowed in Father's pristine driveway.
But between us and escape stands my father himself, flanked by Donovan and six guards, all with weapons drawn.
"Stop right there." Father commands, and even now, even in this chaos, his voice makes me freeze.
The conditioning is so deep, obedience carved into my bones by twenty-five years of his absolute control.
"You're not leaving." He steps forward. The guards fan out, creating a human wall between me and the van. "You're my daughter."
Something breaks inside me. Maybe it's the adrenaline. Maybe it's seeing Paul's promise made manifest in the chaos around us. Maybe it's just twenty-five years of silence finally ending.
"I was never your daughter." My voice carries across the garden. "I was your asset. Your bargaining chip. Your merchandise."
The guests who haven't fled are filming everything. Good. Let them see.
"You ungrateful?—"
"You sold me." My voice rises, fueled by years of suppressed rage. "You literally sold me to Prescott for a business merger. That's not a father. That's a pimp."
Gasps from the crowd. Someone's definitely livestreaming this.
"You know nothing about what I've done for you." Father spits. "The protection I've provided. The life you've lived."
"The cage you built." I take a step forward, and surprisingly, he takes one back. "The marriage you arranged. The education designed to make me a perfect wife instead of a complete person. All the stolen art in that vault, built on the bones of families destroyed by war."
His face is purple now, rage making him ugly. "You'll have nothing without me. No money. No name. No protection."
"I'll have everything that matters." The words come from someplace deep, someplace I didn't know existed. "I'll have freedom. I'll have choice. I'll have love that isn't contingent on obedience."
"Love?" Prescott stumbles through the smoke, his perfect hair mussed, his morning coat torn. "You're mine. We have contracts. Your father promised?—"
The photographer drops him with a single punch. Prescott crumples like wet paper, all his posturing meaningless against someone who actually knows violence instead of just threatening it.
The crowd reacts with fresh screams, but also... applause? Some of them are actually applauding.
"Enough of this." Donovan raises his weapon. "Stand down or we will use force."
