Chapter 6 - Taking Control
The next morning, my phone buzzed non-stop.
32 unread messages by the time I rolled out of bed and made coffee.
Tyler, of course, was first, then Mom, then surprisingly Brooke.
Her message was short and acidic.
“You need to call me now.”
I didn’t reply.
Instead, I got dressed, put on a crisp white button-up, and drove to the Palisade estate.
The manager, Clarissa, greeted me with a warm smile and a hint of concern.
“Mr. Ellison, is everything all right?”
I nodded.
“Just need to update a few things in the contract.”
She led me to her office where I laid out my plan.
Simple, polite, entirely professional.
I wasn’t canceling the wedding.
Not yet.
I was altering the contract, removing the current booking under Tyler and Brook’s name and transferring everything, every responsibility, every vendor under mine.
Clarissa blinked.
“You’re taking ownership of the event.”
“Exactly. And the guest list. We’ll be updating that as well soon.”
She didn’t ask questions, just typed briskly, clicked a few boxes, and printed the revised agreement.
As I signed, she asked, “Should I let the couple know of the changes?”
I looked her in the eye and said calmly, “No, I’ll handle that myself.”
I walked out of the estate with the sun shining on my back, the wind crisp and cool.
That afternoon, I sat down at my computer and started crafting the invitations, not the ones they had planned.
Mine.
New location details, slightly altered wording, and a few notable omissions.
Several names were absent from the list.
Names of people who had spent years making me feel small in rooms they thought they owned.
Instead, I included a handful of others.
Old friends, my father’s former colleague who used to treat me like a son, my godmother who hadn’t been invited at all, a couple of Tyler’s childhood friends who had reached out to me quietly over the years to say they missed me, that the family had gone too far.
The new list wasn’t vengeful.
It was just honest.
I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
May you like
I was just rewriting the script.
And they didn’t know it yet, but the opening scene of their wedding was going to look very, very different, especially when they found out who’d be walking Brooke down the aisle.
