TessTalbot
Daphne "Dani" Wells arrives in Briarhaven, Virginia, ready to marry into one of the town's most powerful old money families.
Instead, she finds out her fiancé, Marshall Vance, has already begun rewriting their wedding without her. The engagement is over, the town is whispering, and everyone seems eager to turn Dani into the perfect public casualty: the humiliated bride, the unstable woman, the scandal everyone can point to while hiding their own secrets.
Then Jack Hartley steps in.
A sharp tongued journalist with his own buried grief, Jack has spent six years haunted by the death of Elise Sloane, the woman he loved and lost on Bay Road. When Dani's canceled wedding starts connecting to Elise's death, a stolen archive, a powerful cover up, and a town full of people willing to kill for their reputations, Dani realizes Briarhaven's gossip is not harmless.
It is a weapon.
As old money families scramble to control the story, Dani must decide whether to run from the scandal or reclaim the narrative they tried to write for her. But the closer she gets to Jack, the more dangerous the truth becomes.
Because in Briarhaven, brides do not just get jilted.
They get used.
And Dani Wells is done waiting in the room someone else prepared for her.