Her shock is evident as tears pour down her face, and a deep sense of nostalgia hits me as I face my best friend.
“I’m sorry, Tallulah.”
I really am, but only for ruining what should have been the best day of her life. Happy that she will be spared from the nightmare that is sure to follow on her wedding night.
“Gideon!”
She sounds unhinged, and he snaps, “Be quiet, Tallulah. This isn’t helping.”
“But you said?—”
“I said, be quiet!”
A little of his cool facade slips as he raises his voice and she gasps, “I don’t understand. What is happening?”
Another voice enters the party.
“Aspen.”
My legs shake as my father steps out from the nearby pew, closely followed by my mother, and from their expressions they were obviously of the same opinion as Tallulah.
“Mom, Dad.”
I have zero emotion in my voice as I face them. Hating that they are here, celebrating another wedding to the tyrant they once called their son-in-law.
“This is most irregular.”
The priest attempts to control the situation, but I don’t rate his chances.
The cameras pointing at me from every angle will be played repeatedly after this day because Gideon Fox is about to lose his upper hand.
My voice rings out.
“On my wedding night, I was raped by Gideon’s friends while he watched.”
Mom collapses against my father, who appears to be in shock.
“I was drugged, beaten and humiliated by this man and then woke up one day as a slave to a woman who drugged me to erase my memory. On Gideon’s instructions.”
My accusations echo around the church, and Gideon shakes his head. “Aspen, darling. You are wrong; this is your psychosis talking.”
He calls out. “She is deluded; she lives in a make-believe world, which is why she was incarcerated for her own protection.”
“She is speaking the truth.”
Another voice calls out from the back of the church, and then another, “It happened to me too.”
“And me.”
“The man is a monster.”
Gideon’s expression is almost comical as one by one they come. The women from his past. The ones that got away. Women the Reapers tracked down, their intelligence gathering phenomenal, and as they crowd behind me in the aisle, Gideon backs away.
“You can’t believe these women. They are lying. She paid them; it’s a conspiracy.”
He is like a trapped gazelle facing a pride of lions, and I’m confident his words won’t dig him out of this one.
“Explain yourself.”
