"I already sent the bracelet out for restoration. I promise it'll come back looking exactly the way it was."
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and held it out to me.
"Just read this when you get up there. It'll be over before you know it. Once the wedding wraps up, I'll come home and spend time with you, okay? And after that, I'll buy you a plane ticket. Go abroad for a while, lie low for three years. When the three years are up, I'll marry you."
I glanced down at the paper. It was a full confession, written in his hand, detailing how I had been so consumed by unrequited love and jealousy that I'd orchestrated a campaign to persecute Elise.
If I read this aloud, I would become the villain everyone already wanted me to be. The vicious, spiteful woman the whole country could hate without guilt.
I tore the paper to shreds and flung the pieces in his face.
White scraps of paper drifted through the air around him, framing the ugly expression that twisted his features.
I strode past him, climbed the steps to the stage, and signaled to the technician I'd already paid off. The backstage surveillance footage from that day began to play on the massive screen behind me.
I turned to the crowd and spoke, my voice ringing through the speakers.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I am indeed here to set the record straight!"
"But what I'm here to clarify is this: who is the real culprit behind what happened to Elise Simmons?"
