Chapter 1

My fiancee, Giselle Warren, singled out two electronic tracking monitors from the bag. Number one was for Dad, and number two was for Mom.

She held them out to me. I glanced down at the names printed on the labels, making no move to take them as I kept my phone pressed to my ear.

"Mr. Crawford, we've been preparing for this reception for months," the hotel manager pleaded on the other end of the line. "The lobster and king crab were flown in fresh this morning. Ms. Warren personally requested the premium dry-aged steak, and the cuts are already prepped. These ingredients are extremely rare and expensive. If you pull the plug now, we simply can't absorb that kind of loss.

"Think about the money you've already—"

"Is any of that food actually going to my family's tables?" I cut in.

Five seconds of dead silence hung over the line.

I hadn't been there when the menu was finalized. By the time I showed up, Giselle and Shawn Warren had already locked everything in. Seafood towers, lobster tails, imported caviar—a lavish spread that catered entirely to her taste.

I didn't mind paying for a high-end reception, but she had ordered two completely separate menus, reserving all the luxury dishes for her side of the room. The most expensive item on my family's tables was a 50-dollar branzino, paired with a cheap platter of cold cuts that didn't even add up to the cost of a single king crab.

When I insisted on serving the exact same menu to both families, Giselle turned it into a screaming match.

"Your relatives have probably never even seen a lobster in their lives!" she had snapped. "Serving it to them would just make everyone uncomfortable. Shawn suggested separate menus to spare me the embarrassment of watching them struggle!"

She refused to negotiate and stormed off to her parents' house. Unable to calm me down, my parents went to her to apologize for my "stubbornness".

"Why do you have to be so stubborn? That fancy stuff isn't filling anyway, and we wouldn't even know how to eat it properly. A few simple, honest dishes are plenty. She's just trying to be practical. Don't ruin her big day over something so small."

My parents weren't blind. They had spent their entire lives on the receiving end of looks like Giselle's. They had learned to swallow every insult, bow their heads, and keep their mouths shut—except this time, I wasn't going to let them.

"Cancel everything. I'll cover the full cancellation fee."

"Alright then."

I opened the wedding planning group chat and typed out a message.

The ceremony was off, all decorations were to be taken down, and the final payment would be honored in full.

The coordinator responded with a string of minute-long voice messages. "Mr. Crawford, the wedding dress is a custom designer piece. Ms. Warren waited two years for her fitting slot. Mr. Warren personally designed the venue layout, and our entire team worked overtime for three months.

"The flowers were hand-selected by Mr. Warren himself. He flew all over the country to source those blooms.

"If there's been a misunderstanding, maybe talk it out first? Tearing down the setup now would be an absolute tragedy!"

It was Shawn again. He was the one who conceived the theme for the dress and designed the whole venue. From start to finish, Giselle hadn't allowed me a single say in my own wedding.

My parents had blamed themselves for that. "We were too poor when you were growing up to give you any exposure to the finer things. We can't compete with Shawn, who went to art school. If that's what your wife likes, you can always pick it up after the wedding."

"Take it all down."

I sent the message, and the chat went completely silent. A moment later, the coordinator sent over a voluntary cancellation waiver, which I signed on my phone without blinking.

Seconds later, Shawn created a new group chat and pulled me into it. Counting the two of us, there were 65 people in the group. The other 63 were my relatives.

The moment the chat was created, Shawn dropped a PDF file into the room—the digital instruction manual for the electronic tracking monitors.

He tagged my handle directly. "Read it carefully. Don't let your people put them on wrong and make a scene at the reception."

Then he tagged everyone else. "Can you guys stop hiding inside, mooching off the AC? Get down here and line up. Who do you think you are, waiting for someone to hand-deliver these to you?"

Not a single member of my family replied. My cousin, Jenna Crawford, posted a single "?" before quickly deleting it out of fear.

Finally, Mom sent a voice message. "We're coming right now."

Just five short words, but her thick rural accent bled through every single syllable, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.