Chapter 2 - The Stolen Wedding
While I was being rushed back into emergency surgery to repair the torn muscular wall of my abdomen and stop the internal bleeding, ten miles away at a luxury historic estate overlooking Puget Sound, Vanessa Bennett’s "wedding of the century" was falling apart.
Two hundred guests sat in silver chiavari chairs arranged across a manicured lawn, listening to a string quartet play smooth classical music under the warm morning sun. Caterers in tuxedos moved through the crowd with crystal flutes of champagne.
Vanessa stood in the bridal suite on the second floor, wearing a four-thousand-dollar imported Italian lace gown. She was pacing the hardwood floor like a caged panther, holding a bouquet of white peonies so tightly that the stems were crushed.
"Where is she?!" Vanessa demanded, glaring at her father, Robert Bennett, who sat on a leather armchair sipping scotch with a deeply uncomfortable expression. "The ceremony was supposed to start twenty minutes ago! Mom promised she would just go to the hospital, tell Daniel to stop being an idiot, and bring him back!"
"Vanessa, calm down," Robert said, though his own fingers twitched nervously against his glass. "Your mother took care of it. You know how Marjorie is. She probably just had to drag Daniel out of that room by his ears."
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the bridal suite flew open.
Vanessa's maid of honor walked in, her face drained of all color, holding a smartphone in her shaking hands.
"Vanessa..." the girl stammered, looking terrified. "You... you need to see this."
"See what?!" Vanessa snapped, snatching the phone out of her hand. "Did Daniel text? Is he outside?"
"No," the maid of honor whispered. "It's on Twitter. And local Seattle news."
Vanessa stared at the screen.
A video, recorded on a smartphone by a visitor in the hospital waiting room thirty minutes earlier, was currently viral across the entire Pacific Northwest.
The video clearly showed Marjorie Bennett—wearing her magnificent, easily recognizable silver wedding gown and jeweled hat—being pulled backward out of the hospital wing by two uniformed Seattle Police officers. Her hat was crooked, her mascara was smeared down her cheeks, and she was screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs while her hands were cuffed behind her back.
The caption beneath the trending video read: Prominent Mercer Island Socialite Marjorie Bennett Arrested for Felony Assaulting Post-Op Patient in Hospital Recovery Ward.
Vanessa gasped, dropping the phone onto the rug as if it had turned into a burning coal. "What... what is this?! This is a fake! This is a joke!"
Before Robert could process what was happening, his own phone rang.
He answered it on speaker, his hand trembling. "Marjorie?"
"Robert!" Marjorie’s voice screeched through the speaker, accompanied by the background echoes of a police booking station. "Get down to the King County Precinct immediately! Call our corporate attorneys! Call Judge Sterling!"
Robert stood up so fast his scotch spilled onto his trousers. "Marjorie?! What happened?! Where are you?!"
"I am in a filthy holding cell!" Marjorie shrieked. "That evil, manipulative little viper set me up! She started screaming and crying the second I stepped into her room! And Daniel—your traitorous son—had the police arrest his own mother!"
"Did you lay hands on her, Marjorie?" Robert asked, his voice suddenly dropping into a cold, terrifying quiet.
"She ruined Vanessa's wedding!" Marjorie yelled back, completely refusing to answer the question. "I demanded she stop putting on an act! Get me out of here right now, Robert! The press is sitting outside!"
Before Robert could reply, a heavy knock sounded at the door of the bridal suite.
Three city police officers stepped inside, accompanied by the venue manager, who looked utterly mortified.
"Robert Bennett?" the lead officer asked.
Robert cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. "Yes. I am Robert Bennett. What is the meaning of this intrusion?"
"Sir, we have a warrant to inspect the property and interview witnesses regarding an aggravated domestic assault that occurred at Northwest Memorial Hospital an hour ago," the officer said flatly. "And we are under strict instruction from the District Attorney to inform you that Mr. Daniel Bennett has executed an emergency legal order preventing any family members from approaching his wife or daughter."
The room went dead silent.
Vanessa let out a horrific, blood-curdling scream of pure rage. She grabbed her three-hundred-dollar wedding cake topper from the vanity table and threw it against the mirror, shattering the glass into a thousand shining pieces.
"She ruined it!" Vanessa screamed, falling to her knees on the floor, her white lace dress crumpling around her. "She did this on purpose! I hate her! I hate Daniel!"
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Down on the lawn, the string quartet stopped playing.
The two hundred guests began whispering frantically as news alerts started popping up on every phone in the garden. Within fifteen minutes, the groomsmen walked off the property, the caterers stopped serving drinks, and Vanessa’s wedding vanished into the most infamous scandal Mercer Island had ever seen.
