Chapter 6 - Her Father’s Empty Chair
There was an empty chair in the front row.
Elise had insisted it remain empty.
Adrian had argued against it.
He said it was morbid.
He said it would make guests uncomfortable.
He said her father would not have wanted sorrow at the wedding.
Elise had simply looked at him and said, “Then let him be uncomfortable with us.”
Adrian had smiled too quickly and let it go.
Now every guest near the front understood why the chair mattered.
It was not decoration.
It was accusation.
A white rose rested on the empty seat.
Beside it lay a folded program with no readable text visible from the aisle.
Elise looked at the chair only once after the recording played.
One glance.
Enough.
Her father had not lived to walk her down the aisle.
But his absence had walked with her anyway.
Adrian saw where she was looking and turned his head away.
Detective Cole noticed the movement.
“You understood whose car it was,” she said quietly.
Adrian’s lips tightened.
“I want my attorney.”
“That can be arranged.”
His eyes flashed.
The phrase did not give him power.
It only confirmed the process had begun.
Vanessa shifted again near the aisle.
The investigator blocking her said nothing.
His silence was worse than warning.
Elise moved toward the altar.
Every step made her injuries visible under the stained-glass daylight.
Some guests looked down in shame.
Others stared, unable to deny what had been hidden beneath bridal silk minutes earlier.
She picked up the wireless microphone from where it rested near the ring box.
Adrian’s face sharpened.
“What are you doing?”
Elise looked at him.
“Finishing.”
Detective Cole did not stop her.
Elise lifted the microphone.
Her voice filled the cathedral, quiet but clear.
“My father deserved to be here.”
No one moved.
She looked at Adrian.
“And I deserved to be alive when I found out why he wasn’t.”
The cathedral absorbed the sentence.
Not as evidence.
As grief.
The kind no recording could fully translate.
May you like
Adrian looked away first.
Read Chapter 7 👉 Because Elise did not use the microphone to beg for sympathy—she used it to give her father the place Adrian tried to steal.
