Black Wedding

Chapter 4

The bodyguards shoved hard on my back, forcing me down onto a patch of jagged, sharp gravel.

I clenched my jaw hard, and my knees locked straight.

Cold sweat streamed down my forehead, but I did not let out a single whimper of pain.

Silas stood a few feet away, twisting a silver lighter between his fingers. He said, "You are tough, I will give you that."

He added, "Still refusing to admit you are wrong, are you?"

He finished, "Let us see just how long you can hold out."

Clara melted into his side immediately, pressing her whole body against his chest.

She pulled out a crisp white handkerchief and pressed it to half her face, her voice wobbly with held-back tears.

She pleaded, "Silas, just let it go, okay?"

She continued, "Iris is your wife, after all. Making her kneel on the ground to scrub the footprints off the blueprint. What will people think if this gets out?"

She added, "Besides, Iris has always been so proud. How could she bear this kind of humiliation? Why don't we just let her apologize to me, and then we can drop this whole thing?"

Silas tilted his head toward her, lifting a hand to brush soft, slow strokes through her hair.

He said gently, "You are always too kind, Clara."

But when he turned his gaze back to me, his whole demeanor shifted, turning ice-cold in the blink of an eye.

He ordered, "You heard her. Apologize to Clara."

He stepped closer, looming over me from his full height, staring down at me.

He demanded, "Say you are sorry right now, admit you were jealous and framed her. If you do that, I will tell them to let you go."

I was forced to tilt my head back, and my eyes locked with his familiar face. A sharp, searing pain tore through the deepest part of my chest.

On New Year's Eve three years ago, it was this same face. He had knelt before me under the sky bursting with fireworks and asked me to marry him. He had promised he would stand between me and anything bad for the rest of his life. He had sworn he would never let a single pain touch me.

Back then, I had truly believed I was the luckiest woman alive. I even gave up my family's inheritance for him. I put aside my career and spent three whole years as a full-time housewife, cooking and keeping our home.

And now... he was letting his own men grind my dignity into the dirt, all just to put a smile on the face of his first love.

I straightened my spine, and my voice came out calm, steady and unshakable.

I said, "Silas. She was the one who ruined the design blueprint."

I asked, "Why on earth should I apologize to her?"

Silas clicked his tongue in sharp annoyance. "Iris, do not push your luck." He huffed a cold, bitter laugh.

He sneered, "Everything you eat, everything you wear, did I not give you every last bit of it? You spend my money every single day, and you still have the nerve to act all high and mighty here?"

He added, "Without me, you would be worse than a beggar on the street."

Strangely enough, when those cruel words hit me, I did not even feel angry anymore. All I felt was a deep, ridiculous sense of irony. So that was what I was worth to him. All three years of giving everything to him. I became nothing. Less than nothing.

"Silas," I lifted my chin and stared him right in the eye as I asked, "do you really think you have already won?"

His brow crumpled, irritation written clear across his face at my stubbornness. "Still running your mouth?" He flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and ground it hard under his leather shoe, crushing it into ash.

He barked, "Go on. Make her kneel and bow her head to the ground to apologize."

The bodyguards got their order and grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head down hard toward the ground.

A searing, white-hot jolt of pain exploded through my skull, and my body pitched forward uncontrollably.

My forehead was just inches from slamming into those sharp, jagged stones when a deafening roar boomed from directly overhead.

Gusts of wind whipped fallen leaves across the ground, so fierce that no one could keep their eyes open against the gusts.

A black Agusta helicopter hovered directly above the villa.

A blinding searchlight cut through the dark, flooding the entire yard with harsh, bright light in an instant.

Silas instinctively threw a hand up to block the searing glare.

Clara shrieked in terror and scrambled to hide herself against his chest.

Silas roared, "What is this?"

The helicopter descended slowly toward the ground.

The brutal gusts churned up by the spinning rotors threw the two bodyguards holding me off balance, and they had no choice but to loosen their grip and let go.

I straightened my back and brushed the dust off my clothes.

The cabin door swung open, and dozens of fully armed black-clad men filed out, locking down the entire yard in seconds.

The man leading them stripped off his overcoat and draped it gently over my shoulders, wrapping me in his warm scent.

He said, "Iris, I am late."