Betrayed on my wedding day

CHAPTER ONE Congratulations, Sera. You're marrying the man of your dreams," Dana said, grinning at me through the mirror as she pinned the last piece of my veil into place. I laughed. I actually laughed, "I know," I said. "God, I know, I'm so happy," Dana shook her head like she couldn't believe me. "You're so annoyingly calm. I'm more nervous than you are and it's not even my wedding." "Because I'm not nervous," I said. "I'm just… happy, that's weird?" "It's disgusting," she said, squeezing my shoulders. "I love it." I looked at myself in the mirror and let myself feel all of it, the dress, my day. The fact that in less than an hour I was going to be Seraphina Cross. Adrian had proposed sixteen months ago. And every single day between that Tuesday and this one, I had woken up certain, certain of the fact that I wanted to be called Mrs Cross. I loved Adrian Cross with everything I had in me, and today— was the happiest day of my life. The makeup artists were finishing their makeup, one of them was touching up my makeup and another one crouched at the hem of my dress checking the lace when Dana's phone rang. She glanced at the screen and her smile flickered. "One sec," she said, already moving toward the door. "It's my mom. She's probably lost in the parking lot, I'll be right back." The door clicked shut behind her. The room went quieter as the two makeup artists moved around me, not talking much, just working. I was smiling at nothing in particular when my phone lit up on the table. A message from an unknown number. No name, no introduction, just a message that said to watch it alone. I stared at it. My first thought was that it was a prank. Someone's idea of a wedding day joke, Dana, maybe, or one of the girls from the bachelorette who thought she was funny. I almost rolled my eyes and put the phone face-down, but something stopped me. I didn’t know what exactly, a feeling I couldn't name, sitting low in my stomach, quiet and insistent. I looked at the makeup artists. "Can you give me five minutes?" I said. "I just need a moment alone." They exchanged a small glance and nodded and slipped out without a word. The door closed and I picked up the phone. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself I was going to watch thirty seconds of some silly prank video and laugh it off as I pressed play and the video opened to a hotel room. The camera was shaky at first, like whoever was filming didn't want to be noticed. Then it steadied. Adrian was on the bed. My sister Camille was with him, my hands were beginning to shake as I watched, my brain kept trying to reject it. kept trying to tell me it was someone who looked like him, someone who looked like her, an angle that was misleading, a misunderstanding that would explain itself in the next few seconds. The next few seconds came and there was no misunderstanding as he spoke. His voice was lazy. Relaxed. The voice of a man with nowhere to be and nothing to hide. "She has no idea," he said with a smug smile, Camille laughed slowly, one of those private laugh I had heard a thousand times at our dinner table growing up. "She's so easy to fool, just a stupid girl,” Camille slurred, a slurry smile spread across her face. "She thinks I'm in love with her…Poor Sera. Always so desperate to be chosen." Another bout of laughter filled the room as she shifted closer, her arms sliding down this c**k, her eyes on him, as she dropped her naked body down her knees. "After tomorrow," Camille said, "she won't have anything to say about it." "After tomorrow," he agreed, "she's just the name on the contract." He drawled and threw his head back, his eyes rolling as she pumped her lips up and down his c**k. “How’d you like that,” she slurred, her tongue flicking the tip of his c**k. “Like I want to f**k you,” he said and pulled her from the floor, spreading her thighs as he eased himself into her. I closed the video before I could watch further, to realize I had tears streaking down my face, my entire life had just caved in. I put the phone down on the table very carefully. And then I broke all at once, from the inside out. I pressed both hands over my mouth and the sob that came out of me was ugly and airless and I couldn't stop it. My shoulders shook. My whole body shook. I slid sideways in the chair and I cried in a way I hadn't cried since I was a child, the kind of crying that doesn't care what you look like, that doesn't leave room for anything except itself. Sixteen months. Sixteen months of certainty . Sixteen months of waking up and feeling like I had finally found the thing that was mine. Poor Sera. Always so desperate to be chosen. His voice replayed in my ears . His voice saying my name like I was something to pity. My sister laughing, it was a day to our wedding. I cried until there was nothing left. Until I was empty and wrung out and the only thing I could feel was the strange flat silence that came after. I don't know when it shifted. One minute I was falling apart. And then, slowly, from somewhere underneath all of it, something else started to surface. Something colder, I wasn’t going to let Adrian and Camille get away with what they had done to me, so I stood up straight and looked at myself in the mirror. My makeup was destroyed. My eyes were swollen, mascara down both cheeks, lips bitten raw. I looked like exactly what I was — a woman who had just had her heart ripped out. I looked at myself for a long moment. Then I picked up my phone, opened the door, and called out into the hallway. "Can you come back in? I need my makeup redone."