My grip intensified on the steering wheel. It wasn’t the worsening conditions but the memory of finding the text message from my best friend and maid of honor, Beth.

Let me backtrack.

A year ago, at a large holiday gathering surrounded by family and friends along with some of the most powerful people in both our families’ world, Skylar took my hand and on bended knee proposed. Like everything else in his life, the entire scene was a performance. My smile and acceptance weren’t as important as the hushed whispers, the pregnant pause waiting for my answer, and the cheers from the crowd when I said yes.

And then my fiancé was off for cigars and bourbon with our fathers and others in the same social sphere to celebrate the uniting of our families. It wasn’t as if I were forgotten. No, I now had an important role. I was immediately surrounded by our mothers and all the ladies in Chicago’s high society who could welcome me into the married world of Chicago’s finest.

Becoming Mrs. Skylar Butler was a destination I never questioned. The road map had been not only sketched but written in ink since the day of my birth, just three months after Skylar’s.

Time moved on. My wedding showers were completed. Our newly constructed home was mostly finished, filled with gifts and all the luxuries money could buy. Our two-week overseas honeymoon trip was booked, and RSVPs to the big day were coming in by the hundreds.

Our wedding was set for New Year’s Eve.

It will be—was to be—the event of the decade.

No expense had been spared for the union of Julia McGrath and Skylar Butler.

This was not only a love story—according to all the society pages—but the business deal of the century. My family lost majority interest in privately owned Wade Pharmaceutical before fiscal-year 2000 when our stock hold went below fifty percent. The reasons could be cited as bad management, the economy, or a number of decisions that didn’t pan out. Regardless, my family lost what we’d possessed since my great-grandfather founded the company.

My family’s controlling interest existed by a paper-thin margin.

Dad blamed it all on my grandfather’s decision to offer shares of Wade—a privately held company—to outside investors. Over time, the chosen investors sold to others, increasing the number of investors, weakening my family’s influence, and increasing liability. As was spelled out in my grandfather’s will, our family’s shares of Wade Pharmaceutical would transfer to me upon my fulfillment of his criteria, the final step being marriage.