Thank you to everyone who read or reviewed the last chapter. Sorry, this chapter is arriving a little later than planned. I'm working on trying to finish up Hydra Lullaby, and I've been putting a lot of energy into that. Also, I have been spending way too much quality time at my dentist lately. That has been affecting my dictation time.

However, once I finish Hydra Lullaby, I will not be starting a new story. That will give me more time to focus on finishing this story. That's my goal for 2020.

Chapter 29: Chaos Before a Wedding

Mornings at the Suarez house were usually chaotic, but today seemed worse in many ways. Justin was currently running around his aunt's former room. He was trying to get his aunt ready for her official engagement breakfast at one of the best restaurants in town. The Suzuki St Pierre Wedding of the Summer Season Countdown special played on in the background. Justin was thankful that her wardrobe was more conducive to his creative needs than what she usually has. Justin is sure Daniel picked out everything.

Unfortunately, Aunt Betty wasn't working with him. They were currently arguing about the necessity of a curling iron.

Justin wasn't that surprised that he was rushing around this morning or that she was fighting his efforts. She was only slightly more cooperative the night before. At least he had more time this morning. They did not need to be at the exclusive James Café for brunch until 10 AM, and it was only 7:30 AM now. Considering they did not arrive back at the house until 2 AM, it seemed too early.

His mother was going to be furious when she finds out that he used emotional blackmail to convince Daniel to let him go to the Mode after party yesterday. Even if it was only for an hour. They would've been backed by 1 AM, but there was traffic. He didn't care because he deserved celebrity time after spending the afternoon running interference between DJ and his mom. Not that he blames his friend for freaking out about the surprised sibling and the very ill parent. It has to be worse going through something like this for a second time.

Of course, DJ was kind enough to introduce him to his little sister's mom, a.k.a. Justin's fashion goddess designer Briana West Hartley. He got to see the bridesmaids dresses early. Although she did ask him a lot of strange questions about his boyfriend. It was enough to make Justin wonder if DJ said something about Austin, but he is pretty sure DJ has said maybe six words to the woman over the last week. He doubts any of them were about Austin. Although according to DJ, Breanna did spend a lot of time speaking to Austin. DJ may have let him bring his boyfriend to help with keeping him away from his mom and his new sister's mom.

Of course, the rehearsal dinner was chaos without DJ's mommy issues, mostly because of Monique's daddy issues and general evil significant others. Gio ex-girlfriend and business partner threw eggs at the limo, and Marc's ex-boyfriend left blood-covered roses at his apartment, per Amanda.

Justin sincerely regrets convincing Marc to get back together with Troy. In his defense, Justin had no idea that the man stalked Marc previously. That is the sort of thing you should tell your friends. He definitely wouldn't have done it if he knew about Jane. However, none of them knew about Jane until last week except for apparently Daniel and Amanda.

Because of everything, including Monique punching out her father, the rehearsal went over, which meant that they did not have time to go back to Queens to get ready. On a positive note, this means Justin had full run of the Mode closet. It was Christmas in July but a month early.

He spent so much time making sure that his aunt was entirely presentable that he barely had time to get ready himself. Although after she picked up her award for fashion article of the year, she mentioned that he was her personal stylus, which was all the thanks he needed. Suzuki tweeted about him this morning. He was so happy that he got to go this year. Even if he was sort of working as the Mode social media Guru (who couldn't actually post about the really juicy stuff due to friendship confidentiality).

"I don't understand why you are spending so much time on my hair. Your mom is just going to change it for the wedding in a few hours." His aunt's repeated complaint broke him out of his thoughts. Sometimes he wonders why he tries.

"Because we are going to your official engagement brunch since we don't have time to do a formal engagement party before you go back to London." Justin chided his aunt with hands-on-hips. "Don't you want to look good for all the pictures and videos that we're going to be sending to the family in Mexico?" He smiled sweetly as he neglected to mention that he will also be posting a lot of it on the made publications social media channels.

"But it's just family. They don't care how I look." Aunt Betty said, trying to push him away again.

"I personally think you are beautiful no matter what you wear or what you are not wearing," Daniel told his fiancée. Really he didn't need to know that last part. He wants to stay ignorant about that until he gets a baby cousin. The noises of last night were terrible enough.

"Unfortunately, every reporter in this country and a few others are following us at the moment. Images from the bad Betty outfit website are already everywhere. Do you really want to add more? Monique also asked me if Justin could post a few images on the Mode social media feeds. Don't you want to look your very best?" Daniel asked. At least his future uncle got it.

"Do you want to sleep on the couch?" Betty replied quickly, glaring at her boyfriend.

"I'm sure grandpa will be happy about that." Justin joked.

"I personally think that you look good in anything and especially nothing," Daniel said, leaning over to kiss Betty in a way was a little too much for him. If he kissed Austin like that in front of his mom, she would kill him. If they were alone, they probably would do that one thing they haven't done yet. After what happened to his friend, he wasn't sure if he was ready for sex, even if he didn't have to worry about pregnancy. There were still STIs to worry about.

"Please step away from my aunt before you mess up her hair again. I love that you two are together. It's adorable, but I heard you guys this morning. There are some things I don't want to know, and I'm sure neither does grandpa." Justin said smirking. Justin spent the night in his mom's old bedroom because DJ was in his. Justin didn't want to kick him out because he knew DJ was having a tough time with everything going on with Alexis. They spent all last weekend texting each other back and forth about the new sister and sick mom thing. Unfortunately, that room was much closer to where his aunt and Daniel were sleeping. He heard everything.

"Where is your father? More importantly, where's my nephew?" Daniel asked, turning to his aunt, most likely not wanting to comment on what Justin said.

"DJ is still sleeping. He said he needs his strength if he's going to be spending so much time around your sister. I think dad is at work. He got a phone call about a problem at the restaurant, and he left right away. He said he would meet us at the hotel." Betty told her fiancé just as Justin tried to work on her hair again. "I give up. Justin, do whatever you want."

"Thank you. It will be a lot easier if you just cooperate." Justin said as he continued working.

"Sourdough girl strikes again," Daniel mumbled under breath. Justin knew that was one of the nicer names that Monique had for her boyfriend's former girlfriend. Most of the others involved expletives. Justin heard the majority of them during yesterday's limo incident (another thing he wasn't allowed to blog/tweet about).

"You don't know that. Things go wrong at restaurants all the time. This could just be a coincidence." His aunt said, looking directly at her fiancé.

"I'm sure it's an accident that Mo's flowers ended up in Connecticut this morning," Daniel told her poignantly. When Justin went into the room to pick out his aunt's outfit, Daniel was screaming at the florists to just fix it. Afterward, he was mumbling something about the merits of Vegas. If his aunt snuck off somewhere to get married without him, Justin would kill her.

"What are you talking about?" Justin asked as he went back to his aunt's hair.

"Gio's former girlfriend, a.k.a. the woman who almost hit you with an egg yesterday is sabotaging the wedding by any means necessary. This including telling sob stories to Gio's Cousins and getting flowers rerouted to Connecticut."

Daniel then went onto retell all that the crazy the ex has done so far, including trying to cancel the catering. Justin was furious that a woman that did not even know his aunt spreading nasty rumors about her. Though Justin and everyone else knew that Betty was in love with Daniel last year, she would have never done anything to undermine his marriage to Molly. Actually, Justin is 100% sure she got back together with Matt because she thought it was too soon to make a move on Daniel.

"Antonella told me all about the crazy bi-person." He said, correcting himself because he knew that his aunt would not like him to use that word in that context. "She never liked her at all and was happy when Gio realized that he didn't love sourdough girl anymore. Monique tried to buy her out, but she refuses to sell. You know that she trashed the limo yesterday."

"This is why I don't think the thing at your father's restaurant is just a coincidence. Considering that the culinary arts are her specialty, I could see her sabotaging the kitchen equipment or something along those lines just to ruin the reception. I am personally surprised that she didn't go that route with the bakery making the wedding cake." Justin already had his phone ready when Daniel took it out of his hands.

"You can't post about that." He chided.

"What's the point of having this job when you guys won't let me write anything good?" Justin said in annoyance. Details about the wedding going wrong would be fabulous.

"Your job is to make Mode look good. This does not make your boss look good, and if she doesn't look good, Mode does not look good. If you're not mature enough for this responsibility yet, I'm sure Monique can find something else for you to do. There's always the receptionist job at the food magazine. I worked there for two summers in high school. It will build character." Daniel said with a smiled that was utterly terrifying.

"Do not even joke about that," Justin said with a shiver. "I know there are certain things I cannot write about. I'm not going to tell anybody about Antonella possibly being pregnant or your sister's health problems. That stuff is personal, and the only two friends I have around my age would kill me. But the wedding is in the public domain anyway. Suzuki has done nothing but talk about it for the last 2 hours. Can I write about it anonymously on my own personal blog?" He asked, slightly frustrated.

"This is personal too. Besides, there is no such thing as anonymous." Daniel said with a sigh. Daniel was probably going to talk about that time Betty wrote an angry rant about him, and it went viral.

"At a minimum, Antonella will know that you're talking about her future sister-in-law. That can hurt your friendship."

Before Justin could respond to his future uncle's words, his aunt pointed them to the TV. On-screen was a dark-haired woman running around with a candle lighter, lighting everything but the candles. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't exactly remember where he saw her before. Suzuki look shocked for a moment before the tone of his voice changed entirely, and he started yelling for security.

"What does Gio's ex-girlfriend look like?" Betty asked, causing Justin to remember exactly where he saw the woman before. She was the woman throwing eggs at Monique before she was tackled by security yesterday. "I'm pretty sure that that's her trying to light the entire wedding hall on fire," Betty said in open mouth shock. The beautiful handcrafted silk that adorned the hall was already going up in smoke. It was a travesty of fashion.

"She was the angry girl that always screwed up your order. She doesn't like you that much either because you're also a fellow ex-girlfriend. I think that's her. What is it with crazy girlfriends and fire?" Daniel said just as the girl was tackled by security.

Unfortunately, this sent the lighter into a highly flammable piece of drapery. Just like that, the venue for the wedding of the summer fashion season literally when up in flames. The only consolation was that the wedding dress was not there yet. It would be ruined by sprinklers now drenching the room.

XXXX

Daniel has been dreading the first anniversary of Molly's death, probably since it happened. Of course, he wasn't expecting to also be worrying about a very sick sister that was causing him flashbacks to last year, but here they were.

Daniel was hoping for a distraction, but he didn't think it would be in the form of a crazy woman trying to burn Monique's wedding to a crisp. On the bright side, at least he would get out of a very dysfunctional family breakfast.

"There's no point for you to continue using your aunt as your personal Barbie," Daniel told his almost nephew. Justin was having too much fun with getting his aunt ready for the brunch there being forced to do. The only positive thing out of this becoming their engagement brunch was now Betty's family would be there too. Unlike his family, her family was actually tolerable and non-homicidal.

For example, he loved Justin. He should have started interning at Mode in diapers. He probably knew as much about fashion as Daniel did. DJ was in much better spirits whenever his friend was around. Justin is the perfect buffer between his nephew and his mom.

"I'm pretty sure brunch has just been canceled. The wedding was being held at the same hotel as the James cafe. As you can see, firefighters are now at the scene." Daniel said just as his phone started to buzz. "That's probably mom now."

"I don't think that's your mom's ring tone," Betty said with a frown.

"No. That is the ring tone I assigned to any of the official Meade publishing phone numbers. This includes my mom's blackberry," Daniel said as he opened his phone without looking at the number.

"Hi, mom," Daniel answered quickly.

"I may be a mum, but I'm not your mother." The voice of his Senior editor said.

"Sorry, Sumreen. I thought you were my mother calling to cancel this ridiculous family brunch that I don't actually want to do in celebration of my engagement. The new EIC of Mode America just had her wedding venue torched by her fiancé's ex-girlfriend on national television at the hotel where the restaurant is. I'm hoping that my mom will cancel, but that's asking for too much." He explained in a rush.

"I could understand not wanting to spend any time with certain family members, especially with a family like yours. I still can't believe your sister kept that she was sick from you for so long." Sumreen said sympathetically. She understood what he was going through. She had her own very ill father in Pakistan who adamantly refuses to come to the UK for treatment. "I'm not calling about that, but I am going to provide you with an excuse not to go if your family brunch doesn't get canceled." She seems very nervous as she spoke.

"What happened?" He asked, knowing in his heart that something was wrong.

"Diana just handed in her resignation because she got the editor job at a new non-fashion publication, and Mr. Pratt just got his revenge on us. The offices are in shambles." She spat out in so much of a rush that Daniel was not entirely sure what she said.

"Diana, quit?" Daniel asked because that was the most shocking and most detrimental. David wasn't that competent, but Diana leaving would be bad even if she wasn't going to a competing magazine.

"She was going to wait until you got back, but after Mr. Pratt took a cricket bat or possibly a sledgehammer to her desk, she just didn't want to deal with it any longer. Your office is even worse. A few others quit as well. Fortunately, our art director William did not." Considering all the things that have been going on at Mode UK in the last six months, he couldn't blame her for quitting. He would want to resign, too, even if the creative director's job was dangling in front of him like a carrot. Thank god they had a competent art director.

"Yet, you're still here." He said quietly, not knowing what to think.

"I have teenagers and a mortgage. Property prices are worse here than in New York. I expect premium compensation for dealing with this crisis while you are in New York posing for the cameras with your new fiancée." For one person to just quit and the other one to demand a bonus, the situation must be worse than property damage.

"How bad is the damage for you to feel that you deserve premium compensation?" Daniel asked.

"Did you know that Mr. Pratt has a cousin who apparently is a computer genius? Supposedly, he was able to create a smart virus that can destroy any file related to a certain subject. This cousin was in charge of IT at Meade Publications London until 24 hours ago." Sumreen explained. This did not sound good at all.

"How bad?" Daniel asked, remembering the entire fiasco right after his father's death when Wilhelmina released a virus that decimated the whole system and the most recent issue of the magazine.

There's no way it could be that bad this time around. First of all, Damien was no Wilhelmina Slater. Second, they took a lot of precautions after that, including moving to cloud computing and keeping backups in multiple places. Of course, Daniel was not entirely sure if the London office was on the new system.

"The good news is the computers are intact. But we can't touch anything until they're decontaminated and IT can guarantee that there are no other surprises on the network. The virus was designed to get rid of any Mode related file on the entire network, including the backup server. Of course, the virus wasn't that smart and wiped a lot of files from some of the other magazines, but fortunately, most of the damage was confined to just us. Unfortunately, we go to print on Monday, and we don't have a magazine anymore. The tech people think that the virus was planted from inside because nobody found it, most likely by the cousin that just quit." Sumreen sounded furious at this point.

"Fuck!" He exclaimed because, really, there was only one word you can say at a time like this.

"Daniel, what's going on?" Betty asked with concern.

"David screwed us over in revenge for getting fired, and Diane just quit. Somehow, he got a hold of a virus that wiped out everything Mode related from the network. The Next issue is gone." Daniel said, repressing the urge to throw something.

"Doesn't the magazine go to the printer tomorrow?" Betty asked.

"Monday technically, but it's so early that you might as well say Sunday," Daniel said, falling down on his girlfriend's old bed. Everything was going so good, and then this happened. He should have known something terrible was going to happen. "This is the last time I ever go on vacation or a business trip right before the magazine is supposed to go to the publisher."

"Put me on speaker, it will be faster for me to explain because unlike you, I am not in shock anymore." He heard Sumreen tell him before doing as instructed.

Sumreen went on to explain everything to Betty as Daniel fought the urge to cry. At some point, he had to remind Justin not to tweet anything about this. Justin promised he was just texting DJ, but Daniel doesn't quite believe him. He almost had a moment of hope when Betty reminded him about their new practice of saving a near-final draft of the magazine to a memory stick and locked it in a safe.

"The pieces of the memory stick were scattered on your desk, along with another unpleasant surprise. Tech may be able to salvage the magazine from the pieces, but it's going to take time." Sumreen told the group in frustration.

"That we don't have." Mode UK could not handle the issue coming out late. They're already teetering at the edge due to recent events.

"Exactly, which is why in the next 34 hours, we are going to recreate the magazine from scratch. I've called in everybody that doesn't have a religious objection about working on the weekend. Will, Kathleen from Features, and Victoria from graphics are already here working, and they've called in as many underlings as possible. Unfortunately, no one from the style department is willing and/or able to come in. Two members of that team quit. Also working in our favor, is that I have a nasty habit of saving all the articles I edit on my home computer."

That was one of the few pieces of good news. Also, unlike the Wilhelmina catastrophe years ago, a good portion of the staff would not be tempted to go to a computing magazine.

"You should also be able to get everything from the freelancers," Betty added.

"Unfortunately, there were not many freelance articles in the latest issue. We're still missing a lot of stuff, but we're working on it. We're currently taking over the British cuisine offices because they are the only magazine that's clean." Sumreen explained.

"Of course, Mr. Pratt would hate to destroy his favorite magazine. Chances are Monique's wedding has been canceled or postponed; therefore, I have lots of free time. I think I save some of the drafts on my laptop. I could head back." He would not let this magazine fall apart. He wasn't going to fail his first time on his own.

"I am not going to say no to your help because we need it. However, I think you will be more efficient if you work from the American offices. At least we know those computers are working properly." Sumreen suggested.

"Good point." He said, knowing that she was right. He would lose valuable time by flying back.

"I can be there in 45 minutes, and I will see if I can get some help from the international style editor here at the New York offices I'll call you later." He said, ending the call.

"We need to head to the Mode offices. Can you please get my laptop?" He asked his girlfriend.

"Sure. Anything else I can help you with?" Betty asked. Part of him would love for her to help him like she always did. However, Daniel took the job in London to prove that he could do this without Wilhelmina, his sister, his mother, or even Betty coming to save him. This was all on him and Sumreen. If they pull this off, he was going to make Sumreen his Co-EIC.

"Since you work for the competition, you can't. I have to do this on my own. Besides, I think we're in better shape than last time. At least we know that the computers here are virus-free. Also, last time, nobody had the good sense to save their rough drafts to an alternate location." Daniel told her.

"They say it's always easier the second time around. I can call Becks to get copies of what he had for you guys before I became his boss." Betty already had her cell phone out as she walked up the stairs. "But first, I'm going to call a cab."

"This is why I love you," Daniel said, smiling.

"Are you sure I can't tweet about this?" Justin asked.

"No, Mr. Pratt destroying the UK offices and computers cannot be public knowledge, especially before I tell Monique about it." He was starting to think it was a bad idea to put a 16-year-old in charge of the Twitter feed. Although, unlike Amanda, at least he asks if he has a question about if something should go public.

"I met you and Betty. It's adorable." He said, smiling.

"Maybe later, although since you enjoy writing so much, you're going to help me. How much do you know about the British fashion scene?" Daniel asked.

"A lot, who do you think tutored Aunt Betty before she went to London fashion week last spring?" Justin said smugly. Daniel remembered how good her articles were from that.

"We may pull this off," Daniel said to himself, taking a deep breath. To think this morning, when he woke up, he was worried about spending the entire day dwelling on Molly's death. Thanks to Pratt and Gio's ex-girlfriend, he had other things to worry about.

To be continued.