“She can’t sing Ave Maria,” Mara whispered, but the microphone captured every syllable.
The ballroom went completely still.I watched her eyes widen in horror when she realized the speakers had carried her words across the entire room. Then panic tightened her expression. For weeks, she had called me ordinary, forgettable, talentless. Now two hundred guests sat waiting for me to crumble beneath the spotlight.I took one slow breath, looked directly at her, and asked quietly, “Are you certain you want me to start?”The instant Mara shoved the microphone into my hands, silence flooded the ballroom for all the wrong reasons. Everyone knew exactly what she wanted.Failure.Her smile gleamed beneath the crystal chandeliers — polished, elegant, and vicious. Behind her, the wedding band froze mid-song. Two hundred guests turned in gold chairs, forks suspended above sea bass and champagne glasses sparkling beneath the lights like tiny warning signals.

“Come on, Lena,” Mara crooned sweetly. “You said you used to sing in school, right?”I stared down at the microphone.I had never told her that. My aunt had, years earlier at a family dinner Mara apparently stored away because humiliation was her favorite hobby.Mara Vale was the bride — a recent graduate from Bellmont Conservatory — and she wore her degree like royalty wore a crown. Throughout the reception she reminded everyone she was “classically trained,” that her voice carried “European color,” and that true music was “never meant for amateurs.”I was her husband’s cousin.The quiet cousin.The one who worked “in production,” as Mara loved saying, as if I spent my life untangling cables backstage.