3 days before my wedding, Dad called: “I’m not wal…

“Well,” my mother said, her voice tight but accommodating, “we will just have to figure out a tight schedule. We can manage both, right, Hector?”

“Of course,” my father agreed too quickly. “We will make it work.

It is a big weekend for the family.”

I sat frozen. The cruelty was not a byproduct of their busy lives. It was the point.

Isabella had chosen that exact date to force a choice, testing the strength of Preston’s financial leash. She wanted to prove, in front of everyone, that she could summon our parents away from my defining milestone for a fabricated party. When dinner finally ended, we stepped out onto the cold Bozeman sidewalk.

The night air bit at our coats. We walked toward the parking lot, where Preston’s gleaming silver Porsche Macan sat under a streetlight, looking entirely out of place against the rugged Montana backdrop. Next to it sat Elias’s dusty ten-year-old Ford Bronco.