I Tore Up The Marriage Contract In Front Of Everyone

Emma's POV: Before the family recognition banquet, Patricia Radcliffe, the fake heiress, volunteered to do my hair and makeup. Then, snip! Her scissors sliced straight through my waist-length locks. "Whoops, sorry! My hand slipped, Emma," she trilled, clutching the chunk of severed hair between her fingers, her grin oozing with smug satisfaction. "But I guess that butchered haircut suits a backwoods' girl like you." Everyone in Los Angeles's elite circle knew that the real eldest daughter of the Radcliffe family was soft-spoken and elegant, with her long, cascading hair as her signature look. Patricia was clearly trying to make me a laughingstock at the banquet. I stared at my choppy, uneven hair in the mirror and said nothing. Instead, I simply took the scissors from her hand and decisively chopped the remaining messy locks into a sharp, ultra-short textured cut. Patricia thought I'd given up and resigned myself to looking awful, so she snickered even harder. That was, until the matriarch of Los Angeles's elite circle, a woman whose brutal, iron-fisted tactics even the Radcliffe family patriarch feared, pushed open the banquet hall doors with a low, heavy creak. The entire room gasped in unison, and Patricia froze in place, her jaw hanging open. As it turned out, my look at that moment, with my cropped hair and crisp black suit, bore an uncanny resemblance to that ruthless powerhouse in her prime, when she'd charged at her rivals with a blade in hand and single-handedly taken down their entire crew. ***** The heavy banquet doors swung shut slowly behind Patricia. A low, dull thud from the door hinges cut through the hall's chatter, muting the noise at once. Selena Spencer paused by the carved wooden folding screen, not speaking right away. Her gaze drifted up slowly from my black suit, finally landing on my freshly cropped short hair. Her knuckles whitened slightly where she gripped her redwood cane. I didn't look away. I planted my feet firmly on the edge of the carpet, spine ramrod straight. Patricia, standing right beside me, had a flash of panic flicker across her eyes, but she quickly schooled her features back into her usual soft, demure, well-behaved act. She sailed to Selena's side, her voice soft and cloying as she spoke up, "Selena, don't take offense. My sister just came back from the countryside, you see. She's grown up wild out in the country and hasn't learned Radcliffe's proper etiquette yet." She flicked a strand of her own glossy long hair over her shoulder, deliberately tilting her wrist to flash the expensive black onyx bracelet coiled there. "I offered to do her hair for the banquet, but she said long hair was too much of a hassle and insisted on cutting it into this freakish butch mess." The old man, George Radcliffe, seated at the head of the room, slammed his teacup down hard on the table with a sharp clink. "What kind of behavior is this? No one in the family daughter shows her face to guests with a buzz cut!" My fiancé, Evan Peterson, marched over with a scowl and clamped his fingers around my wrist in a bruising grip. "Emma Radcliffe, do you have to make a fool of yourself in front of everyone here?" His rough palm dug into my wrist bone hard enough to make it throb. "Patricia was kind enough to help you with your look. You don't have to thank her, but why cut your hair like this just to pick a fight with the elders?" I stared back at him, perfectly calm. "She cut my hair right down to the scalp on purpose. The cutoff strands are still in the dressing room if you want to check." His brow furrowed even deeper, his face twisted with clear impatience. "She was raised spoiled, it's totally normal for her to slip up with a pair of scissors every now and then! She had already apologized. What more do you want from her?" "A slip of the hand cuts hair that evenly all the way to the root?" I jerked my wrist hard out of his grip. "She had the scissors, and she was the one who chopped off my hair. Don't play dumb. You know damn well who's making a big deal out of this." Evan's face shifted. He clearly hadn't expected me to talk back to him in front of the whole room. Patricia's eyes instantly welled up with tears. She grabbed grandpa's sleeve, trembling a little. "Grandpa, I really didn't mean to. If Selena finds my sister's hair hard to look at, I'll take her punishment for her." Selena finally dragged her gaze away from me, fixing it straight on Patricia's crocodile-tear-streaked face. "Patricia, since when do you get to take punishment on someone else's behalf for the Spencers?" The entire hall went dead silent in an instant. Even the waiters carrying trays froze mid-step. Selena tapped her cane lightly against the carpet once. "Her hair's cut sharp and clean, and she's got a spine to match. That's a hell of a lot more pleasing to the eye than those whiny, fake-sobbing little phonies I see parading around every day." Grandpa's stern, imposing expression froze right on his face. He forced a dry laugh, scrambling to smooth things over. "Forgive her, Selena, for her poor manners. This girl's been running wild out in the countryside for too long. We haven't finished teaching her how to behave properly yet." "Taming?" Selena let out a sharp, cold huff. "Why on earth would you grind down a perfectly good backbone with those stuffy, outdated rules of yours?" She waved me over. I'd barely taken one step forward when Evan sidestepped right in front of me, blocking my path before I could get any farther. "Mrs. Spencer, today's Patricia's birthday party, and it's also the Radcliffe's recognition banquet. Emma doesn't know the etiquette of the elite, she might offend the elders. Why don't we let Patricia serve you tea first instead?" He pulled Patricia behind him, shielding her with his body. Selena arched an eyebrow, her gaze slicing across his face like a sharp blade. "Is this how the Peterson's raised you? To stand in front of your elders and cut in line for some imposter?" Evan went rigid on the spot, his face flashing from pale to bright red to livid. Patricia's hand, which was holding the teacup, jerked violently, scalding hot tea sloshed out, spilling all over her skirt.